You know what seems to be extra rare? Pentium II and III Xeons.

[Eudimorphodon]

Honestly I can’t see the point of doing a dual Slot 2, considering it really won’t be all that and a bag of chips over a dual Slot 1. (And a dual socket Tulatin will probably solidly beat it… and be MUCH easier to find.) If you really want Slot 2 I’d have to say it’s quad or bust.

 

[NeXT]

I have in my rack a quad Netburst-era Xeon system (Compaq DL580 G2) with a 4 channel Smart Array card and two StorageWorks disk shelves. I think anyone going into a rack server thinking this will be awesome is going to find out amazingly fast how annoying they can be. Even sitting on standby it drinks power unless you unseat the redundant power supplies.

On the other hand, it got me through last weekend's cold snap! :D

 

[Agent Orange]

we've all done it. These things go through stages. When they are worthless its hard to think one day this will be important again.

Exactly. I have a box of stuff waiting for their day again.

 

[DeltaDon]

I've got a dual PIII Xeon tower stored away. I bought it from Geeks (not Geek Squad - remember them in near San Diego?) and I believe it was sold as a Intel made machine. They were selling IBM rack mount servers at the same time. A friend of mine bought one or two for his business.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I think anyone going into a rack server thinking this will be awesome is going to find out amazingly fast how annoying they can be.

More than once I‘ve brought home comparatively puny one and 2U servers to fiddle with some work related thing and, yeah, so far as I’m concerned rack servers don’t belong in your house. They’re made for environments where earplugs are pretty much mandatory, that’s really all you need to know.

 

[Unknown_K]

I got a local C2Q (Q9550) system in a rack case a few years back and I gutted it. The fans for cooling are just way too loud. Luckily it was a standard Intel ATX board so I kept it and got a nice heatsink for it. I guess if you can stuff it into a closet and it doesn't overheat, they could bed useful.

 

[jafir]

More than once I‘ve brought home comparatively puny one and 2U servers to fiddle with some work related thing and, yeah, so far as I’m concerned rack servers don’t belong in your house. They’re made for environments where earplugs are pretty much mandatory, that’s really all you need to know.

Don’t look at my living room. But I agree, if I ever get a “shop” type building everything will go there.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

There is this niche market for small quiet rack servers that can be tucked away in places like telephony closets (anyone remember the Cobalt RaQ?), but yeah, your typical datacenter rackmount is just murder to have at home unless you have a basement or garage. I think the *loudest* thing I ever had running in the house was actually an Apple Xserve G5; when sitting idle it wasn't much worse than a really bad/cheap gaming PC with bad fan bearings, but if you really slammed the CPUs (or at power-on, before the OS thermal/power management software took over) it is *not* an exaggeration to describe it as sounding like several power drills with the triggers held down full. A Dell PowerEdge 2650 (dual socket NetBurst Xeon) was probably not *quite* as loud at full panic and somewhat worse at idle, but pretty much in the same ball park. You'll hear any of them through a closed door unless your house is a lot more sturdily built than the one I was living in at the time.

I think the other thing worth noting for anyone thinking about something like a Slot 2 build (or any other "server hardware" experimentation) is that unless servers/server applications specifically interest you you're going to have some difficulty having "fun" with these systems. Motherboards that combine old-school server CPUs like that with, say, AGP video cards, are rare as hen's teeth if they exist at all, and their hardware is generally poorly supported by consumer versions of Windows, so if the idea here is to build a really exotic period gaming machine you'll probably be disappointed. Back in the day I gave away some 1.4Ghz dual-socket Tulatin ATX boards shortly after acquiring them because I genuinely couldn't think of much fun to do with a system based on a ServerWorks chipset that only had PCI-X expansion slots, needed expensive UltraSCSI hard disks (the ServerWorks chipset had a really lousy ATA controller, only really good for CD-ROM drives), and, well, just wasn't really much if any faster than a old rotgut AMD Thunderbird system even with both cores. (And would get its butt handed to it for any single-threaded task.) And I have no regrets.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Honestly I can’t see the point of doing a dual Slot 2, considering it really won’t be all that and a bag of chips over a dual Slot 1. (And a dual socket Tulatin will probably solidly beat it… and be MUCH easier to find.) If you really want Slot 2 I’d have to say it’s quad or bust.

Agreed. I wanted a quad. I used to know someone with an eight-way. I really just want a box that has 4 sockets, I don't even care what else it does.

I think the other thing worth noting for anyone thinking about something like a Slot 2 build (or any other "server hardware" experimentation) is that unless servers/server applications specifically interest you you're going to have some difficulty having "fun" with these systems. Motherboards that combine old-school server CPUs like that with, say, AGP video cards, are rare as hen's teeth if they exist at all, and their hardware is generally poorly supported by consumer versions of Windows, so if the idea here is to build a really exotic period gaming machine you'll probably be disappointed.

Sometimes tinkering with hardware is its own reward. I I have no practical use whatsoever for an ALR 6x6. I still want one. I'll never forget those screenshots of Windows 2000 with 6 CPU cores on the task manager. Its so delightfully unnecessary.

I have in my rack a quad Netburst-era Xeon system (Compaq DL580 G2) with a 4 channel Smart Array card and two StorageWorks disk shelves. I think anyone going into a rack server thinking this will be awesome is going to find out amazingly fast how annoying they can be. Even sitting on standby it drinks power unless you unseat the redundant power supplies.

On the other hand, it got me through last weekend's cold snap! :D

Lucky !!!

I used to have 128Us of rack space across 4 racks before I moved. Ironically I never actually had any rack-mounted systems(see: "threw out a bunch of stuff I shouldn't have"). Its sort of a long story but it still bums me out. I will get to rebuild my data center one day.

 

[twolazy]

Well dual slot 1 and 2 boards have gone the way of PPro boards, too expensive to play with.

I sold one last year for $75 on here, they are still affordable, just not on eBay.

 

[Unknown_K]

Motherboards that combine old-school server CPUs like that with, say, AGP video cards, are rare as hen's teeth if they exist at all, and their hardware is generally poorly supported by consumer versions of Windows, so if the idea here is to build a really exotic period gaming machine you'll probably be disappointed. Back in the day I gave away some 1.4Ghz dual-socket Tulatin ATX boards shortly after acquiring them because I genuinely couldn't think of much fun to do with a system based on a ServerWorks chipset that only had PCI-X expansion slots, needed expensive UltraSCSI hard disks (the ServerWorks chipset had a really lousy ATA controller, only really good for CD-ROM drives), and, well, just wasn't really much if any faster than a old rotgut AMD Thunderbird system even with both cores. (And would get its butt handed to it for any single-threaded task.) And I have no regrets.

I have 4 or so identical server works based dual socket Tulatin ATX boards with just PCI-X and they are good for Windows 2000 server and connecting old tape autoloaders to it. Gamer would avoid them like the plague because of the lack of AGP. The Athlon MP boards that supported dual Athlon server chips did have AGP (AGP Pro) and were decent for games but much less common.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I have 4 or so identical server works based dual socket Tulatin ATX boards with just PCI-X and they are good for Windows 2000 server and connecting old tape autoloaders to it. Gamer would avoid them like the plague because of the lack of AGP. The Athlon MP boards that supported dual Athlon server chips did have AGP (AGP Pro) and were decent for games but much less common.

I had an athlon XP dual board from that era, didn't actually game on it, thought. It was my 3d studio max workstation. Years later I used it as part of a "ghetto render farm". Interestingly enough, the dual 1800+ could render frame noticeably quicker than single-socket P4 systems which were much faster on paper.

There IS one "gaming" card out there for those dual Tualatin boards. The Matrox Parahelia came out in a PCI-X edition; though this model of the card is rare and fairly expensive. Also the Parahelia is not exactly a general-purpose gaming card. BUT with adapters the dual DVI ports can become 3 VGA ports allowing for early surround-gaming. There aren't many games optimized for the Parahelia but its a unique experience for them that seek it.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

well, every decade or so, the ASUS XG-DLS ( https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-xg-dls ) will pop up on ebay. its practically the only dual slot-2, non-oem, ATX board that I know of. If one does pops up on ebay, make sure the cpu brackets are included. they are unique to the motherboard. Also it requires the rare 2.8V xeons. 99% of all the chips you see on ebay are the 5/12v with the integrated voltage regulator. the asus board needs the 2.8v processors.

I've found my White Whale. Thank you for giving me a reason to live.

 

[shirsch]

If you think the Slot 2 modules are large, try a DEC Alpha 21264 Slot B processor.

 

[VERAULT]

Exactly. I have a box of stuff waiting for their day again.

Hah I wish I had the room but I dont think lightning will strike twice.
For instance you all know how I feel about Pentium 4's.. I still Have at least 2. I would imagine there are still HUGE NUMBERS of them out there. So even if holding onto them, I really dont see their value going as high as say a 486 desktops today. Plus I dont think the build quality is there so Im sure most wont work in say 25 to 30 years. Speculation I suppose, but they were problematic when new. They are were built in prime corner cutting times.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

DEC Alpha 21264 Slot B processor

Ok thats pretty neat. How rare are quad socket systems for that?

Hah I wish I had the room but I dont think lightning will strike twice.
For instance you all know how I feel about Pentium 4's.. I still Have at least 2. I would imagine there are still HUGE NUMBERS of them out there. So even if holding onto them, I really dont see their value going as high as say a 486 desktops today. Plus I dont think the build quality is there so Im sure most wont work in say 25 to 30 years. Speculation I suppose, but they were problematic when new. They are were built in prime corner cutting times.

Good P4 hardware will last the same as good 486 boards, even if its not as repairable. In every generation you're going to have corner-cutters and premium builders. That's just life.

I do agree though that I don't think P4s are ever going to become sought-after. They occupy a weird niche where they are slightly too fast for Windows 98 but at not fast enough for XP. Yes I know they will run XP just fine, but if you skip ahead to the Core2 Duo era and PCIe x16 graphics cards, XP just gets so very much better. When the time comes for XP to truly be considered retro, it will be the 8800 GTs and SLI motherboards that everyone goes after.

That's why I'm shopping for different things to run on my 3.2ghz P4 build.

 

[Agent Orange]

Hah I wish I had the room but I dont think lightning will strike twice.
For instance you all know how I feel about Pentium 4's.. I still Have at least 2. I would imagine there are still HUGE NUMBERS of them out there. So even if holding onto them, I really dont see their value going as high as say a 486 desktops today. Plus I dont think the build quality is there so Im sure most wont work in say 25 to 30 years. Speculation I suppose, but they were problematic when new. They are were built in prime corner cutting times.

My P4 is sitting in its original box and I haven't fired it up in over 10 years - maybe longer. It's an Intel mobo.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

My P4 is sitting in its original box and I haven't fired it up in over 10 years - maybe longer. It's an Intel mobo.

If you don't want it I'll give it a good home

 

[VERAULT]

They occupy a weird niche where they are slightly too fast for Windows 98 but at not fast enough for XP.

What????
XP was designed to run on them...

Even the old 1.4ghz running on RDram Rimms ran fine on XP.


And this brings up another point. Pentium 4s had PCIe slots.. how could we possibly consider something that runs a brand new card (as is the standard) vintage.

 

[NeXT]

It's the patching, my dude.
Even by the time I retired XP from daily in 2019 to make it fast enough on a 3.2ghz P4 you had to give it everything.