[rescue] rescue Digest, Vol 56, Issue 32

[Skeezics Boondoggle]

> --- James Fogg <James at jdfogg.com> wrote:
>
>> Free.
>>
>> State unknown, but believed to be nearly complete and working, 2 trays 
>> of Fujitsu Eagle drives with IPI interfaces. Nice clean cabinet/rack 
>> with all the plastic. Will need processor modules (I believe that 
>> SMxx's and such work). 2 processor cards (for a total of 4 cpu modules, 
>> additional processor cards can be added for I think 16 total cpu's).
>>

Actually, the 4/690MP is a VME-based machine, and only supports 4 CPUs, as 
you noted, in 2 Mbus slots on a single large processor board.  IIRC, it 
has 3(?) Sbus slots on it as well, but most of the expansion is through 
VME cards.  It's the big daddy of the "deskside" 4/470 and 4/670MP 
machines, which had fewer slots and were physically smaller.  This 
generation preceeded the SS1000/SC2000, which used the XDbus architecture 
to allow for more CPUs (8 in the SS1k, 20 in the SC2k), eliminating VME in 
favor of Sbus slots on every processor board.

The 4/490 (and later 4/690) were the first Sun boxes to use the 56" 
datacenter cabinet, I believe; that was carried on into the next 
generation SC2000.  While they look the same on the outside, in the later 
generation that Sun figured out that uh, pulling the hot air _down_ 
through the card cage and blowing it out the bottom (with a big, noisy 
squirrel cage fan) probably wasn't the smartest way to go about cooling a 
box that big.  So the 690 will dry your ankles, and a 2000 will dry your 
hair. :-)

I have a fondness for those old machines since they were the first big 
SPARC iron I got to play with after the 3/260's and 3/280's we had.  We 
named the 4/670MP "guardian" and the 4/690MP "colossus", and had them play 
.au files we recorded from the movie "The Forbin Project" at boot time - 
"THIS IS THE VOICE OF COLOSSUS" would boom from the speakers, which 
annoyed the hell out of the software engineers whose office was on the 
other side of the wall from the server room. :-)

-- Skeez