[rescue] New acquisition...

[Patrick Finnegan]

(Just because I'm posting this on April 1st doesn't mean I'm joking)

A few days ago I paid for (and soon will be picking up) a new addition 
to my friend's IBM SP... a set of 16 200MHz POWER-3 nodes plus an 
actual SP switch, completing our acquisition of a whole SP system.  
This was the "SQ" or development SP that Purdue had been using until 
its recent demise (minus some parts which got sold back to pay for new 
equipment).

Total cost?  Well, aparently Sun Ultra 5's help, as I was able to lower 
the price by buying a pile of them in addition (in various states of 
disrepair), much like Purdue was able to lower the cost of some Sun 
gear a few years ago by getting free Blade100s with it.

Drum roll... whole purchase was $200, with a few U5's left over after 
scraping together the working pieces.

Yay.

And the best part yet... I've already played with booting Linux on the 
nodes, and it works!  There's no support for the switch card, but as I 
have just one switch, my friend could use that exclusively for the 
Microchannel half of the SP.

Now, I just need to figure out where to put this stuff, which is going 
to be the hardest part.

Pat
-- 
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