[rescue] The best 'rescue' workstation

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sat, 23 Apr 2005, Andrew Weiss wrote:

>> I figure if I got an IBM I would put Linux on it and not fool with AIX.
>> 
> That would probably be a mistake with such a machine.  A huge mistake.
> The graphics adapters Jonathan talks about below would be hardly
> supported I'd think...

The higher-end ones would certainly NOT be supported on anything other
than AIX.  However, provided you don't require OFW support for your
framebuffer (ie: willing to use SMS through a serial port), you can
probably toss in any ol' PCI graphics adapter and Linux will DTRT.

> if you wanted to do Linux on an IBM box you probably should make sure
> you're getting a PPC instead of a POWER box...

POWER3 (and to some degree POWER2-SC) and later are perfect supersets of
PowerPC, and, therefore, will run Linux quite happily.  In fact, the
POWER4 and POWER3-II systems at work all changed their banners to
"PowerPC" with the last round of firmware updates I did because IBM wants
to hammer that point home.

>> Indeed. I just saw on eBay form 44P-170 400MHz machines, no RAM or
>> Drives, going for $200. That's pretty tempting.
>> 
> Nice... just make sure you don't get a 44P-150... which is a 604e
> instead of a POWER 3-II.

The only thing I -really- hate about my 43P-150 (not 44P) is the case
design, which is the third-worst I've ever seen (the two worst being
the Sun Ultra5/10 platform).  The system isn't terribly fast, but it's
plenty usable for a desktop.  In fact, with a GXT800P, it's
significantly snappier than this AXi, and nearly as much so as an
Octane with MXI graphics.

The only reason it isn't on my desk is because I can't get two decent
graphics heads on it due to the craptacular case design.  A pair of
GXT800s would -rock-.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke  ) "It's alright for someone to sleep past noon every
Elgin, TX         (   once in a while.  That's what it means to be a
USA                )  free human being."       --Roger Smith, The Big O