[rescue] What is this?

[Sheldon T. Hall]

 Thomas Gallaway writes ...
> Francois Dion wrote:
>
> > Looks like a Challenge, but weird badging and less drive space. They
> > dont even say what is in it as far as CPU and all:
> >
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3084395556&cate
> gory=11175
> >
>
> It is a Controll Data rebadged Challenge. There are a bunch of companys
> who did rebadge SGI stuff. Like siemens nixdorf and controll data. But
> there where more.

Mine's a Tandem, and, except for the badge and the color of some of the
plastic, you can't tell it from a SGI Challenge L.

I dunno about the graphics in the eBay item, but it looks like it has some
of the same stuff mine had, in particular the tape drive (150 MB QIC) and
CD-ROM (2x caddy-style).  It looks like it has blanking plates or odd sleds
in the lower three drive bays, but otherswise looks pretty normal.

Whether it's worth $300 plus shipping, I dunno.  It would depend a lot on
what graphics, CPU(s) and RAM it has.  It could, in theory, have a single
R4k/150 and 16 MB of RAM, which means you'd have, well, the world's largest
and loudest low-end Indy, I guess.  At the other end of the scale, it might
have 12 R10k/195-2 processors and 2 GB of RAM, which would definitely tend
toward the studly end of things.

-Shel