[rescue] re: Q: Is this a good buy?

[ghub005 at xtra.co.nz]

robert brooke gravitt said:

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I'm looking at this HP box:

<http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2042424345>

What do you guys think?

I'd have to find HP-UX media , tho->>

Not a particularly bad (or good) box. The default configuration of the wide SCSI bus on the C180 is high voltage differential (FWD). This will make it difficult for you to find suitable internal/external hard drives. However there are adpator boards out there that convert regular SE-SCSI drives to FWD so this isn't a huge problem.

I'm not familiar with prices in your part of the world, but my advice is to hold out for a C240 or C360. Sometimes you will find a system labelled as a C180/C200/C240 but which has been internally upgraded to a C360 (a simple replacement of the mainboard assembly). These systems have a distinctive small blue panaflow heatsink on the CPU and will announce their correct identity if queried in the boot loader. 

The memory config is good on this machine - although the 64MB SIMM modules aren't worth a lot these days, the module pinouts are non-standard and the memory kits are a little difficult to come by.

Try to get a system with a decent hardware accelerated frame buffer (FX2, FX4, FX6 etc). The connector on the back of the graphics card is DVI-I (HP call it the extended video connector EVC) and adaptors for HD15 are readily available. 

Media kits are fairly easy to get if you know any HP engineers, admins, or user groups. Impossible to buy without a service contract though. I can send you a CD-R copy of a HP-UX v11 kit if you get stuck, though postage from NZ will bite.

Regards,

Gavin