<![CDATA[Seventeen years ago!]]>Seventeen years ago! I bought this multi-million dollar hoard of Sun servers from a scrap yard for $300. After testing, fixing, and swapping parts to max out some of them, I traded a couple for an SGI Onyx for the museum, a few more for parts of what eventually became my personal 16-proc Origin-2000, and kept two as compute servers for my film making.

(A maxxed-out E4000 has 14 x 400 Mhz UltraSparc II's, and 14 gig of ram (In 128meg sticks! Ha ha ha. Warm.)).

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/topic/9cdbe0ad-356e-41b2-b712-4dd9c3aa4006/seventeen-years-agoRSS for NodeThu, 14 May 2026 23:32:30 GMTWed, 06 May 2026 18:57:28 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Thu, 07 May 2026 17:24:52 GMT]]>@davefischer As former private owner of a functional E10K, I can admire that 😁

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/masek/statuses/116534456652465040https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/masek/statuses/116534456652465040Thu, 07 May 2026 17:24:52 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Thu, 07 May 2026 03:35:45 GMT]]>@davefischer Back in the '90s my company went paperless. (Which generated 3x as much paper...) All on Sun workstations. They had them stacked up like cord wood. I figured they were about $10,000 each at the time, so seeing all those lovely things just piled up boggled my mind at how much they spent to go paperless. And that doesn't count the cost of the custom software for our shop floor.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/agreeable_landfall/statuses/116531196446891182https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/agreeable_landfall/statuses/116531196446891182Thu, 07 May 2026 03:35:45 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 23:34:14 GMT]]>@JBrianCoyle @davefischer our cluster ran platform's lsf. mostly it was stuff like u60s but we had a row or two e450s and a handful of 4500s. every once in a while we'd need to use finance's 6800, 10k, or 15k, after we paid to max them out. we maxed out the CPUs in the enterprise servers so we could max out the memory and then run a single threaded job for weeks at a time praying nothing went wrong because it was the last step before going to market. this was for chip design.
we had a beowulf cluster, or two or three, as poc in lab on machines running linux but it never got put in production.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://discuss.systems/users/keithpjolley/statuses/116530246728421319https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://discuss.systems/users/keithpjolley/statuses/116530246728421319Wed, 06 May 2026 23:34:14 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 22:47:20 GMT]]>@davefischer to run Portal Infranet billing software on Oracle, it was capable but also a resource hog.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.vivaldi.net/users/fazalmajid/statuses/116530062357666558https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.vivaldi.net/users/fazalmajid/statuses/116530062357666558Wed, 06 May 2026 22:47:20 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 21:52:36 GMT]]>@ralfmaximus

Ohhh... "peak theoretical" was around 11 gflops per maxxed-out unit, if I remember correctly? The original machines were around 2/3 maxxed. Around 60 gigaflops for the entire cluster?

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/davefischer/statuses/116529847089829554https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/davefischer/statuses/116529847089829554Wed, 06 May 2026 21:52:36 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 21:33:53 GMT]]>@fazalmajid @davefischer
Mid-90s thru mid-00s worked for a service provider, everytime the Sun sales guys got wind of a new solution being built for a customer they were knocking on the door, ‘looks like a good fit for an E10K’. Rarely was it!

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mas.to/users/guardeddon/statuses/116529773486398583https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mas.to/users/guardeddon/statuses/116529773486398583Wed, 06 May 2026 21:33:53 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 21:33:53 GMT]]>@fazalmajid @davefischer
Mid-90s thru mid-00s worked for a service provider, everytime the Sun sales guys got wind of a new solution being built for a customer they were knocking on the door, ‘looks like a good fit for an E10K’. Rarely was it!

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mas.to/users/guardeddon/statuses/116529773498906322https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mas.to/users/guardeddon/statuses/116529773498906322Wed, 06 May 2026 21:33:53 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 21:26:13 GMT]]>@davefischer

Care to guess as to total FLOPS?

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/ralfmaximus/statuses/116529743336657417https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/ralfmaximus/statuses/116529743336657417Wed, 06 May 2026 21:26:13 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 21:12:23 GMT]]>@galacticstone

Most of them? Rolled up or in a flatfile thingy. Most screenprinted by friends. The B&W pieces are by me. This was 2023:

Link Preview Image
]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/davefischer/statuses/116529688998410388https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/davefischer/statuses/116529688998410388Wed, 06 May 2026 21:12:23 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 21:08:02 GMT]]>@fazalmajid

"pair of Sun E10K" Lord those are big!

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/davefischer/statuses/116529671874210233https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/davefischer/statuses/116529671874210233Wed, 06 May 2026 21:08:02 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 20:59:53 GMT]]>@davefischer "Your authority is not recognized in Fort Kickass" 😆

Link Preview Image
]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/rpardee/statuses/116529639833435927https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/rpardee/statuses/116529639833435927Wed, 06 May 2026 20:59:53 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 20:49:54 GMT]]>@davefischer I more interested in the collection of old band flyers (punk?) on the wall. Do you still have those?

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/galacticstone/statuses/116529600567691654https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/galacticstone/statuses/116529600567691654Wed, 06 May 2026 20:49:54 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 20:46:17 GMT]]>@davefischer
Since this is - "Imagine a Beawolf cluster of those"!

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mas.to/users/JBrianCoyle/statuses/116529586351344348https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mas.to/users/JBrianCoyle/statuses/116529586351344348Wed, 06 May 2026 20:46:17 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 20:41:59 GMT]]>@davefischer be careful, I'd gotten one of the first Sun E3000 (or was is the E3500?) for eval at France Telecom for use on our ISP Wanadoo. It caught fire in our office server room, fortunately rapidly extinguished. We went ahead with SGI Origins 2000 instead IIRC, though we did get a pair of Sun E10K later for our billing system.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.vivaldi.net/users/fazalmajid/statuses/116529569429018245https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.vivaldi.net/users/fazalmajid/statuses/116529569429018245Wed, 06 May 2026 20:41:59 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 20:11:59 GMT]]>@davefischer Wait, are you the guy from Office Space? (Sorry, I could NOT resist.)

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://dmv.community/users/phf/statuses/116529451449075580https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://dmv.community/users/phf/statuses/116529451449075580Wed, 06 May 2026 20:11:59 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 20:06:00 GMT]]>@davefischer I bet that pile isn't light either; a place I worked needed one of those as a performance reference; it was used only a handful of times and lived at the bottom of a rack and was called 'ballast'.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.org.uk/users/penguin42/statuses/116529427948776143https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.org.uk/users/penguin42/statuses/116529427948776143Wed, 06 May 2026 20:06:00 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 19:17:43 GMT]]>@davefischer every one I dealt with had a penchant for eating clock boards, fans, and SIMMs. In roughly that order.
Out of morbid curiosity I looked at eBay, and nostalgia is a HELL of a drug.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://weird.autos/users/rootwyrm/statuses/116529238051276278https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://weird.autos/users/rootwyrm/statuses/116529238051276278Wed, 06 May 2026 19:17:43 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 19:08:29 GMT]]>@rootwyrm

All upgraded CPU modules (mirrored cache), so that wasn't a problem.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/davefischer/statuses/116529201757902964https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/davefischer/statuses/116529201757902964Wed, 06 May 2026 19:08:29 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 19:07:06 GMT]]>@davefischer they also tend to have 14 weeks of downtime per 3 years and every failure takes 14 days to fix even though you have '4 hour.'

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://weird.autos/users/rootwyrm/statuses/116529196366359124https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://weird.autos/users/rootwyrm/statuses/116529196366359124Wed, 06 May 2026 19:07:06 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Seventeen years ago! on Wed, 06 May 2026 19:06:10 GMT]]>@davefischer Zowie! 🤩

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/markmalowany/statuses/116529192647272286https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/markmalowany/statuses/116529192647272286Wed, 06 May 2026 19:06:10 GMT