Anyone looking for a server should look no further than eBay.
Today’s deal? Sun Enterprise 10,000 server, $2499. I think my laptop has more hard drive space, but 58 SPARCs at 336 MHz (4MB cache) and 55 GB RAM? Nice. Just plunk a couple 500 GB drives in there. 😉
Edit: fixed the link.
From the “also not bad” category, a lot of 10 servers, dual 2.8 GHz Xeons + 4 GB RAM + 6x 36GB drives, $9K.
Or a 1U machine, dual Opteron 242s (1.6 GHz) + 2GB RAM + 250 GB disk, $359.
I’ve been toying with the idea of looking for an Alpha VMS system. I’d really prefer a very small PDP-11 but I doubt I’d find one.
I’m not sure about VMS, but there are quite a few Alphas on eBay…
This one is actually a really powerful system, but you’ll need your own HDD + OS.
For some reason the DS10s are popular. That one’s $350, and it apparently has an IDE drive, so for like $100 you could plunk a 500GB drive in there.
These are an order of magnitude cheaper, as a lot of 30. Mind the descriptions, though, as some have no RAM, some have no disk, neither have both, but some have neither. Still, piece it together and you’ll have several neat machines.
So it looks like the hard part won’t be finding an Alpha, it’ll be finding VMS.
Huh, lots of old Sun giants…
E4500, 12x 400 MHz + 8GB RAM, $1050.
Similar, but only 8 processors, much smaller size… $350. Something tells me than an 8-way SPARC, even at 400 MHz, with 8GB RAM, is still a pretty decent system.
One of the pricier guys, but an E6500, 28x 400 MHz processors, 28GB RAM, for $4,000.
And it turns out there’s another E10K, but with only 12 processors and 12 GB, for $2K.
And finally, $1000 buys an E4500 with 14x 400 MHz SPARCS + 14 GB RAM.
Finding VMS would not be a problem for me. I am still in touch with people who used to develop that OS and several of them still work with it for a living. 🙂