Nekochan Net

I've been looking at some aix machines(mainly rackmount servers, but some towers, too), but all seem to be too physically large for my liking. Anyone aware of a smallish aix box that can run aix5?

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The 7011-250 is the smallest.. a little pizza box about the size of a SparcStation 20 or Indy. It will run AIX up to 5.1 but pretty slowly. 4.3 or lower is a better here. I guess a ThinkPad 860 would be smaller if you don't mind serial console for AIX 5.1.

In a slightly larger desktop case, the 43P could be a decent choice. These come in various configs, the 140 (166MHz-2xxMHz 604/604R), 150 (up to 375MHz 604R), and slightly more rare 240 (same CPU modules as the F40, usually around 233MHz 604R). These will all do up to AIX 5.3 with reasonable expectations for the clock speeds.

There's a 40P in a similar case but it's a dog, stay away unless you want to run OS/2 or WinNT for PPC .

The B50 is a 2U rack server with similar insides to the 43P-150. These are somewhat plentiful and all around decent machines.

All of the above machines are 32-bit if that matters to you. Everything past this point, save 1U servers and blades from the past decade, is much much larger. Step up to a 44P, a rather large tower, and you're now in 64-bit land but still limited to AIX 5.3. These are pretty common, but be prepared for some shipping costs.

If you want to do AIX 6 or 7, you'll need a POWER4 or greater system. IntelliStation POWER is a good choice, but you may be able to score a server for cheaper if you look diligently. For some reason sellers mark these way up compared to other hardware. Maybe because they look sexy, or because IBM didn't shit on their UNIX biz? Not sure, but the supply isn't limited compared to any other gear.

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SGI Fuel, Indy R5k
IBM RS/6000 7006-42T, 7011-250, 7012-397, 7012-G40 (upgraded to 4x 200MHz PPC), ThinkPad 710TE vintage tablet, ThinkPad T400, various System X, NetVista 2800
Sun Ultra 27 Xeon Quad Core 3.20GHz, Sunblade 2500 Silver, SunFire V445
HP c8000

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I'll 2nd the 43p for 5.1.

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4xRS6K 2xHP9K 6xSUN 1xDEC 14xMAC 7xPC 2xPS2

Note that the 140 and 240 are PReP architecture and are thus limited to AIX 5.1. The 150 is CHRP, however, which allows it to run 5.2 and 5.3 also.

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SGI O2 R5000-200SC 512MB 9GB IRIX 6.5.30
MacBook 2x2.1 2GB 120GB OS X 10.7
PowerMac G4 Quicksilver 1.8GHz (Sonnet) 1GB 40GB OS X 10.5
Sun Ultra 60 2x450 1GB 2x72GB Solaris 9 + WinXP Pro (SunPCI-IIpro)
HP J6000 2x552 4GB 2x36GB HP-UX 11i v1
IBM 7012-350 128MB 2x2GB AIX 4.3.3
AlphaStation 400/166 384MB 2x2GB Tru64 5.1B
DECstation 5000/125 32MB 4GB NetBSD 4.0
VAXstation VLC 24MB 535MB OpenVMS 7.3
NeXTstation Color 32MB 1GB NEXTSTEP 3.3
Amiga 1200 68030/68882-50 2+64MB 2GB AmigaOS 3.1

Ah yes, you're right - AIX 5.1 on those boxes only.

The -150 could need a firmware update for AIX 5.3, http://ps-2.kev009.com:8081/rs6000-firm ... sBeta.html

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SGI Fuel, Indy R5k
IBM RS/6000 7006-42T, 7011-250, 7012-397, 7012-G40 (upgraded to 4x 200MHz PPC), ThinkPad 710TE vintage tablet, ThinkPad T400, various System X, NetVista 2800
Sun Ultra 27 Xeon Quad Core 3.20GHz, Sunblade 2500 Silver, SunFire V445
HP c8000

http://ps-2.kev009.com:8081/ - IBM Retro
http://www.kev009.com/ - Blog
Free Usenet access for comp.* heirarchy. Send me a message for posting access.