----- Original Message -----
From: "PC Automation" <pcautomation_at_mindspring.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 3:53 PM
Subject: IBM Server 500
> I purchased an IBM Server 500 series computer yesterday at a yard sale for
> only $10.. It's a pentium 90 with 64 RAM, CDROM, 2.88 Floppy drive, and (5
> ea. ) 2.25 Gig Wide SCSI-2 hard drive in it. It's a very big case that
holds
> a total of 12 SCSI drives, and a mix of other things.
> When I got it home I power it up and it booted up up nicely with a Novel
> 3.12 OS (100) user licence.
Hmm, nice catch. Very nice for a home file server. I have a P100 based
4.11 server at home but 3.12 is fine as long as it has it's Y2K patches
(heck even without, it's no problem). 3.12 is officially past 'end of life'
now, I still have all the patches for it though. (We have an old 3.12 server
out at the Air Force Cadet HQ). FWIW, a netware server is the ideal thing
if you want to run diskless dos/win3x boxen, great for troubleshooting etc
too, since you don't need a working hd or boot floppy to get a machine
booted up, just a card with a boot rom and the right boot image on the
server. Nice for playing networked multiplayer Doom 95 (my kids love that),
Dune 2000, Command and Conquer or a host of other stuff that likes IPX
networks.
Advantage: You can have a machine with Win98 or whatever on it, plus a
bootable card. At startup, the card bios will cause it to ask "Boot from
Network? y/n?" if you say no, it boots off the hard disk as normal, and
windoze can use the card. If you say yes, it boots dos from the server.
Nice clean environment ideal for the games I mentioned without stuffing
around with boot configurations.
When you get it going, have a look in Volume SYS: in the LOGIN directory for
a file called net$dos.sys, that's the default name for a bootable image.
It's probably not got the drives on a RAID from that era, but if it is,
that's even better.
Your biggest problem may be logging in to the SUPERVISOR account.
SUPERVISOR is Novell 3.x speak for ROOT (Unix) or SYSTEM (VMS) accounts.
I've never had to break in to a Novell 3.x box, but sure to be a way if you
have console access.
If you decide to persist with it, I'll dig around and find out how.
> I was thrilled until the power supply made a pop
> and , a small Cap must have blown. and now it has no power
It could well be just the fuse, have someone check the supply. Failing
that, I doubt a replacement supply would be real dear.
As a server, this is still a very nice machine for a small network,
mainboard would probably take up to a P100, or P120.
64Mb is quite a bit of ram for a NW3.x box, even adequate for a 4.11 system,
with 10Gb or so of volume space.
> I would have loved to use this as a home server, but I really don't have
the knowledge to
> repair the PS and I really see no real value in this machine other than
it's
> 5 SCSI-2 Wide Hard Drives.. Any Ideas from the experts here.. ??
Have someone knowledgeable fix it. Or replace the PSU. This is a nice
machine, too good to part out.
Cheers
Geoff in Oz.
Received on Mon Feb 18 2002 - 01:42:38 GMT