[rescue] CS6400s on ePay

[John Mothershead]

Hi all,

 Maybe a bit of explanation on my part will help. I've talked to these guys
a lot. They need to get rid of them, they won't break up the lot. Maybe in
time they will.

 I tried to get enough interest to buy all 13, but only a few stepped up.
The major problem is the memory. I spoke with two manufacturers, engineers
not sales drones, and they would need to see a SIMM to be able to see if
they could fab one. The other problem is the unknown cost. 32 sticks per
board * 5-8 boards a machine. We'd have no problem meeting the minimum run
size, it's just the unknown cost.

 The other drawback people had was the 3-phase power. Unless you are really
special, you probably can't run this in your basement.

 Centurion Surplus has agreed to keep me informed as to the status of the
machines. I'd still be willing to help set up a group buy, go up and view
the machines, arrange shipping etc. Shipping will probably be more than the
$1000 cost of the machine. I just can't warehouse these indefinitely.

It's ironic. Here's a machine I have been looking for, for quite a while.
Along it comes, and there are just to many.

John


> -----Original Message-----
> From: rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org [mailto:rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org]On
> Behalf Of Skeezics Boondoggle
> Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 1:35 AM
> To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> Subject: Re: [rescue] CS6400s on ePay
>
>
> On Sun, 23 Mar 2003, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>
> > --- Al Potter <apotter at spankingnuns.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3407566302&cate
> gory=1484
> >
> > THIRTEEN in one lot, no RAM - nice... ;^)
>
> Yup.  John Mothershead and I had both posted about these; John was trying
> to pull together interested parties and coordinate a group buy.  He and I
> have corresponded at some length, and both have tried to reason with the
> seller about splitting up the batch and/or parting out the machines, but
> so far not much progress.
>
> The RAM is supposedly proprietary, but I've done some side-by-side
> comparisons of the SIMMs from the CS6400 and SIMMs from a SC2000E, and
> they appear to be identical.  I have parts with the Cray part number on
> them in both 60ns and 70ns, which is made all the more confusing by the
> fact that I found SIMMs with the Sun part number in both speeds as well!
> According to the chips used, both types are using 4M x 4 RAMs... So if it
> can be determined that the SS1000/E or SC2000/E 68-pin parts _can_ be used
> in the CS6400, then perhaps RAM for these beasties could be found fairly
> cheap.  It may even be possible to get one of the companies that made 3rd
> party upgrades for the sun4d machines (none of them seem to list those
> anymore) to run a batch, if enough people were interested...
>
> The big problems are still physical space for storage, the cost of
> transport, and the steep requirements for running one of these machines.
> Even if the RAM issue is easily solved, the power, cooling, weight, SSP,
> licensing and software issues are tough.  I'm still hoping something can
> be worked out.  It is estimated that there are enough parts (boards &
> power supplies) to build four complete, fully-loaded systems by combining
> the guts from all 13 machines.  At the very least, I'm desperate to try to
> salvage at least four or five of the 13 chassis and all the boards and
> power supplies.  While it would still be a shame to have those chassis
> potentially scrapped, it would be absolutely criminal to have the
> contents
> of those machines destroyed.  So I'm trying to work out a deal of some
> kind.  If anyone is interested, contact me off-list and we can try again
> to rescue these cool machines.
>
> -- Chris
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> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue