[geeks] Java Workstation - Windows Trouble...

[Mark]

On 2 Jan 2008, at 15:21, Bill Bradford wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 07:59:56AM +0000, Mark wrote:
>> Hi,
>>    I recently got a Java Workstation 2100z (oddly with the second CPU
>> missing? Is it actually a 1100z?)
>
> Did you mean to post this twice?

Yeh, sorry, I posted it and it didn't come back to my GMail so i  
posted it again. I posted something a few weeks back about the same  
machine and never got an answer and thought that one hadn't got to the  
list either.

> My boss scored a 2100z out of a "trash pile" at work; the only thing
> "wrong" with it was that it was missing the front plastics.  Doesn't  
> affect
> functionality at all.

It's interesting how closely they resemble the U20 when you take that  
big bow-fronted plastic bezel off the front :)

The case is very well designed with 5 notable exceptions:

The hard drive trays are very strange - because of the cables at the  
back of the drive for SCSI and PATA drives (well, and SATA too in the  
case of this machine - I broke a SATA cable trying to install the  
drive in mine - another story) they are not Spuds, but some bizarre  
tapered bays with sprung rails on that spread out at the tail end to  
clip into the bays. This makes installing a drive with no special  
rails a real pain. my SATA disk is held in with the rails I cut off a  
spare Spud (sacrilege, yes, but needs must), but I had to wedge o  
piece of cardboard in one side to stop it slopping about and  
potentially falling down 2 slots while running (generally a *bad*  
thing).

The plastic clips that hold the PCI/AGP cards in at the back suck. I  
pushed a plug onto the DVI connector on the video card on mine and the  
plastic clip shattered. It's held in with an industry standard thumb  
screw now, at least they had the decency to thread the holes UNDER the  
plastic clips :)

The rear exhaust fan is a monster, but it's also a model prone to  
bearing failure. Sun JWs have had it, Apple PowerMac G4s have had it  
and so have HP/Compaq workstations. I found a replacement made by a  
company called 'Scythe' but it's yet to arrive, I am just having to  
tolerate the weird droning noise the current one makes at low RPMs.

Why, if it's as good as a 'standard' ATX case, is it so deep? It  
wouldn't be a problem so much if it was flat bottomed like the U20,  
but the bezel at the front makes life darned awkward. It's too deep  
for the front to sit securely on the curved front edge of my bench,  
but on the same count there's no friction at the front if you hang the  
front bezel over the edge of the bench. I have it stood on 2 rubber  
Mac feet at the front for the moment. I need to glue them on though  
really.

The cable routing off the drive bays is crappy. I keep having to  
juggle it to get the side to fit right. unfortunately it was an  
awkward time for Sun to release a low cost x86-64 workstation. SCSI  
was waning in popularity and perennially expensive, so only available  
as a 'high end' option. SARA was not ubiquitous enough or cheap enough  
to use all-out at the time. PATA disks were a must to keep the low  
cost machines low cost really, which stopped them using traditional  
Sun backplane and spud setup, as I believe the U20, U24 and U40 x64  
machines do now.

Most off-the-shelf PC cases I've used were much worse though. Hats off  
to Sun, it's an easy and friendly case to work on for the most part.

Would you guys consider it blasphemy against it if I removed the AMD  
motherboard and fitted a ASUS Core2 Duo one with PCI-e and DDR2? It'd  
effectively become a U24 in an older box right?

That was a bit of a rat hole... I still haven't solved the Windows  
problems with it sadly :(

-- 
Mark Benson

My Blog:
<http://mdblog.68kmac.org>
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"Never send a human to do a machine's job..."