[rescue] IBM RS6000 43P-140

[Patrick Finnegan]

On Monday 19 April 2004 20:58, Eric Webb wrote:
> On Monday 19 April 2004 09:16 pm, Thomas Gallaway wrote:
> > Just found a IBM RS6k 43P-140. Wont show anything on the monitor
> > but has VGA. It has PS2 so I assume it
> > might be set to console. Will check that later.
>
> RS/6000's (generally, there are some exceptions) don't do anything on
> the serial port until after the OS is well on its way to being up
> (that's what the LED is for).  Plug in a tube and standard PS/2
> keyboard/mouse and you can access the SMS screens for some very basic
> "diag" information and config. Just press (or press several times)
> the F1 key in between the chirp sound effect and the fanfare sound
> effect.  (Or is it F10?)
>
> > It says' model 7043-140 on the front and 604e-200Mhz.
> >
> > Anybody know if that is a nice box? I want to start playing with
> > AIX so I guess this might be perfect for that.
>
> Slower, but it will let you play around for sure.  Will run anything
> up to 5.1, but no 5.2 since it's prep.

SLOW!?!?  Sure, a POWER(1) box is slow, but I have trouble calling 
something running at 200MHz slow, especially a Power(PC) box.  At work, 
our homedirs are served off a quad 332MHz 604e box.  It's not what I'd 
call slow. (Although it is much slower than it should be...  Just the 
name "research computing" [or our newer one "advanced computation"] 
makes me think of fast computers, not things that went obsolete a few 
years ago.)

Right now, my web server is a 233MHz 7043-140, running Linux.  It's 
quite a bit more responsive than the 133MHz box which preceeded it, 
like when I try to establish an connection SSH to it.

I'd say a that box would make a fine workstation for learning AIX on.  
I'd suggest you stay away from trying to use it as a video encoder, or 
for OpenGL apps, but otherwise, it should work well.

Pat
-- 
Purdue University ITAP/RCS        ---  http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/
The Computer Refuge               ---  http://computer-refuge.org