The server hosting this space

Anything about computers, really.
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zero cool
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The server hosting this space

Post by zero cool »

Brief History
Right, so I was given an IBM eServer xSeries 226, manufactured in 2004. It spent its life as an active directory server running Windows Server 2003 at the offices of a museum, up until 2011 when it was replaced. After that it sat in a corner for 15 years, waiting to be scrapped. Along came I and snatched it up before it would meet its maker. (If that would ever happen tbh)

Hardware Configuration
It's a fairly well configured system, being only 32-bit. It has *some* 3GHz Intel Xeon CPU that's either dual-core, or single-core with HT (which is more likely). The system doesn't report which model it is, helpfully enough. And I have not removed the cooler to check. But being from 2004, I assume it's some Pentium 4 based core.
It has 3GB of DDR2 ECC-RAM, which is plenty.
There are three 73GB Ultra320 SCSI-drives in a RAID1 with a hot spare. This array used to be the only and main storage in the server in its previous life.

Hardware Configuration changes and thoughts
I added a new 960GB SSD from Kioxia to use as both system drive and general storage. It should be sufficient for a long time to come.
The RAID array is still in use, however. I partitioned and formatted the volume to use as general storage. At the moment it's storing the Movie Night files.
I do like old SCSI RAID arrays, but they are prone to failure, and two decades later I really don't trust it very much. Hence the low priority storage.

Software
I quickly found out it did not even attempt to boot directly from a USB stick. (Was worth a shot) So I had two options; Either write a bootable floppy disk with the Plop Bootmanager, which at that moment felt like a bit of a chrore. So I did the more sensible thing.

Remeber burning optical discs? Yeah okay, you probably do. Who am I kidding, honestly.. Anyways! I threw a DVD-R into a modern-ish system, burned the ISO to it, realized the server only had a CD-ROM drive, dug up a 650MB Kodak CD-R from 1999 (lol) and burned the ISO to that. I then found out the internal optical drive didn't quite work. So I did the usual dangling-another-optical-drive-out-the-side-of-the-case method. This worked fine.

I proceeded to install the OS, which ended up being Debian 12.5 32-bit, with no desktop enviroment installed.
I installed the Apache webserver, MySQL and PHP to complete the ever elusive LAMP-stack.
The phpBB forum software package was then taped on top of it all, to bring you this wonderfully outdated online experience that has somehow managed to live and thrive (mostly twitch along) to this day.

And here it sits, just to the left of its new friends, under a desk.
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zero cool
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Re: The server hosting this space

Post by zero cool »

Not super recent really, or interesting. But the servers have a more proper home in a rack now. Sitting on a massive fucking rack shelf. But still technically in a rack. Making real good use of those 24 ports in the switch as well!
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Everything is a smoke machine if you operate it wrong enough.
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Re: The server hosting this space

Post by Ben »

This era of Xeons can be confusing, I looked it up myself to clarify but as suspected your CPU definitely has 64-bit instructions if your box runs DDR2 memory.

Nocona and Irwindale were the earliest Xeons designed for DDR2, and what you've got is either basically a P4 Prescott HT (but the Xeon version) or a Pentium D (their OG consumer dual-core).

If you're sure it is from 2004, then it is a single CPU /w HT, or possibly dual socket, but they didn't make true dual-cores till 2005. And, easy to forget C2D wasn't immediately after the P4. They briefly had the Pentium D. Last netburst attempt.

I bought a Compaq Proliant big-ass tower like that back around 2007ish, and ran my website(s) and UT servers for my clan, all the goodies. Sucker drew like 210 - 250w from the socket @ idle iirc. Dual socket, so two HT Prescott era P4 Xeons @ 2.2, 2 GB RAM but mine had DDR, and 3 or 4 36 GB 10k SCSI drives in RAID. I was using Win 2003 back then, but don't tell anybody.
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Re: The server hosting this space

Post by zero cool »

Yeah it's all a bit of a mess really! It really felt like it should have 64-bit instructions, indseed.. And what you pointed out does make sense. Not that it
makes a lot of difference at this point from a usage standpoint. but it might be something to explore in the future.
Sometime when I'm feeling extra bored I'm gonna rip the cooler off of the CPU and see what it actually is. I wouldn't be surprised if them IBM motherfsckers have etched their own logo onto it and just "Xeon" next to it.. :lol:
Everything I've found points to it being from 2004, and is indeed a dual-socket system, but only equipped with one CPU. So HT is the most likely option.

Hah, that's awesome! I've got a giant softspot for old Compaq servers. They were just quirky and strange. I guess building "the first" rackable servers spawns some interesting and less than ideal solutions.. :D Yours was one of the laters ones though, but still. Very neat! The things we did for the fun of it. And still do in some cases. This forum for example! :D
Everything is a smoke machine if you operate it wrong enough.
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