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Re: ROSS?

On Mon, 12 Apr 1999, [ISO-8859-1] Nils-Erik Svangård wrote:

> I was offered to buy an old server for aprox. $300, it's a fujitsu
> teamware server, with no hd no memory, a cdrom, diskdrive, tape drive, and
> some strange motherboard, they said to me that it was alpha-processor on
> it. However my newbee eyes could not find any processor at all, well
> maybee it was just cleverly tucked away somewhere.
> On the motherboard i found the word ROSS printed on it, Level One which I
> figure is the onboard ethernet card, symbios logic XXCXXXX something which
> probably was the scsicontroller, mounted in one of the slots was another
> scsi-controller , printed on the controller was the word SUN, that got me
> thinking, maybe it's not an alpha.
> Should I buy the thing?
> /nisse 

How old is it?  If it's what I think it is, it's an Amdahl/Fujitsu
teamserver, which should be NT-based (meaning, it's more likely a Pentium
or compat running NT).  From what info I can find currently, they are all
Intel based and should be based on existing (known) equipment.  Be aware
that Fujitsu also makes Sparc equipment, so this may be some ancient Sun
clone.  In that case, it may have a processor on a card in the system (not
on the motherboard).  In that case, I'm unsure as to whether or not it'll
run Linux or not.  Best thing to do is to ask whomever was going to sell
it to you which OS they were running on it.  Since I don't think NT ever
ran on Sparcs (well, ok, it did, but nobody marketed them that I know of),
that may be the best clue.

As to whether or not to buy it...hmmm...it's up to you.  Depends on how
much hassle you may want to deal with if things aren't exactly compatible
with current kernels.  It looks ok, but who knows with legacy hardware.

At any rate, it's not an Alpha at least.  In fact, the only other company
besides DEC/Compaq that I know of to make ANY Alpha product like that
would be Samsung, who's just been licensed for m/b and chip products
anyway.

C
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