[rescue] SS5-170 mobo available

[Bryan Gurney]

On Mon, 02 Jan 2006 21:03:07 -0500, Joshua Boyd <jdboyd at jdboyd.net> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 12:32:57AM -0500, Mike Nicewonger wrote:
>
>> It -is- serving DNS and HTTP proxy (squid) and barely breaks a sweat.
>> I also have an old SS5 upgraded SS2 serving DNS.
>
> Do SS5s run cooler than SS20s?  The only reason I'm not currently
> running SS20s is fear of cooking them, though I never had that fear
> about U1s.

I've seen a cooked Ultra 1, but that was from the CPU fan failing.  This  
was a consistent problem for the U1's.

As for the SS20, yeah, you have 2 to 4 CPUs on MBus cards, and IIRC the  
only ventilation in there is from the power supply fans, just like the  
SS5.  My 110MHz SS5 runs fairly cool; the CPU has one of those  
"stacked-disc" heatsinks on it, and the only ventilation is the power  
supply blowing onto the board.  It's pretty good if you give it a cool  
hard drive; it got hot in there when I had a hot 9GB Seagate Cheetah, but  
when I switched that out for an 18 GB Quantum drive, it was a bit cooler.   
I have an 18 GB Cheetah in my Ultra 2 that runs nowhere near as hot as the  
9GB; I don't know if it's a "feature" of the 9GB model, or whether my  
particular 9GB has an issue.  Oh well, that's what you get with cheap used  
SCSI hard drives!  I should get a newer one from ComputerGiants or  
something if I want more reliability.

Installing an OS on a SS5 is an interesting exercise.  Some SS5's have a  
1/3 height 5.25" bay that would only accomodate a certain Toshiba slim  
SCSI CD-ROM drive.  IIRC it pops out with the spindle like a laptop drive,  
but it's DOG SLOW (2X).  My SS5 doesn't come with this drive, so at first  
I'd open the lid and give it an internal Plextor 40X SCSI CD-ROM drive  
(with ID set to 6, of course).  I've since bought the same type of drive  
in an external enclosure, since my Win2K gaming rig normally has the  
Plextor.  After the OS was installed, I'd shut down and remove the drive,  
and hope that I wouldn't need a CD again.  Some of the later SparcStation  
Aurora chassis have a proper half-height 5.25" bay; I had a SS4 that had  
this chassis, but the board was flaky on this system, and I didn't feel  
like transplanting the SS5 board sled in there (I don't know if I could've  
done it.  Oh well).