Hi, it's dumpster diving time again.
Look what I scored.
Well, it's not that exciting but it might be to the apple fanboys out there.
We've got an Apple Xserve.
These are ancient Apple servers from about 2003 vintage.
The xslot model they're called.
So it probably deserves to stay in the dumpster,
but I couldn't resist bringing these things up and cracking the lid open on these things.
And from several accounts these things weren't all that succesfull at all
and Apple have now discontinued the entire line of these xserves.
They went through various models, these ones as we'll see on the specs on the back
use the G4 processor so like really ancient stuff.
They don't use the modern Xeons like the newer models of these things did.
The reason they call them the xslot is because tadaa...
I haven't actually opened these, no, empty.
Look at that, shows you how old it is, we've got an IDE interface drive.
These are all drive slots.
You can probably see why no one is gonna get excited over these things.
It is the dual processor model 1.33GHz
It's got 1GB of RAM, 60GB hard drive
know nothing fancy at all and yet here
it's a dual processor G4 from about
2003 vintage so 13 years old pretty much
useless today this one down here is even
worse
look at this is like the original 1GB
256MB not even 1GB of RAM.
well anyway this one at the top here has
a VGA card in it so that be PCI slots it
looks like we've got a serial interface
and USBs and whatever the mac things are
and the ethernet and a tiny tiny fan
for this rack server i think it could be
a bit loud
hmm the other one down the bottom here
it doesn't even have a video card so
these things are absolutely enormous and
they want a fair bit to you can see my
benches nine hundred millimeters deep so
they're almost as deep as my bench like
8-15 millimeters anyway you know we say
you're on the EEVblog don't turn them on
taken apart and by the way for those
wondering why you haven't seen many
dumpster dive videos are in a while is
because there's been nothing there it's
not that I haven't bothered to do him
spin tries a bone so to get these things
I've been pretty easy as I like four or
five screws on each side of these little
thumb screws here on the front and this
should just slide back Arian sticks
hey there we go
actually this case design is really
quite neat that not only then they got
this sliding rails on here these two
orange things here have this tab right
down here so you disengage and can pull
that back like that so the whole thing
can then what
come off eventually there we go
beauty actually the thermals of this a
court interesting
he is our processes under here Warren he
hot
no touchy this squirrel cage fan here is
obviously not like a design to arm take
the heat out if he and blow it out the
bottom of it but if you look at the
bottom there is there are no events down
there so they're just tryna suck it down
into where and this one
what's it do it right it's just look
here we go there we go like what what's
got you I like lately is just second
under the boards and things like that
like there's no i mean granted there's
only one rec unit hi
you know is a limit to what you can do
in terms of our cooling but yeah geez
and I'm guessing that this one here is
our design for the pci cards of course I
don't know you might have a big-ass
graphics card in there or something
we've just got a little pokey graphics
card here which we can take a squiz act
well nothing I in there at all 2001
vintage ati radiant like yeah like
Gandhi bugger-all i guess you could get
gooey up huh
but like when I was a boy right this
thing it was like super computer
territory but now it's like that like
kids just go what the hell is that
that's just pathetic but actually
they're done you know reasonably well
defeat on all the functionality in the
one rack you know they got the slim line
drive over here and they've got like I'm
locking mechanism here which actually
locks the slots in place that quite nice
really like that and I just a front
panel indicator and switchboard here but
you know like it's not a reasonable job
there's a bridge in boarding here I'll
show and down here they've got like a
little liar bridging board check it out
and that that connects the motherboard
over here to our arm slots over here so
i'm not sure the interface and
everything else that they're actually
doing there but that's that little
bridge board converting those and we've
got ourselves a ethernet card here and
the battery doesn't look like that it's
late
the backup battery but intel chipset
here we're going to have our jewel rg4
processes he we've just got some boring
dimm slots only two populated and yet
because this one had the one gig so
they'd be 512 make a pop I think and oh
not much else but does the power supply
up here is I Delta so top-quality parcel
and top quality brand power supply some
nice little la fans on the end here just
to cool the power supply on its own you
know if you've got to scrap this thing
for parts and are these little fans are
fantastic these are squirrel-cage ones
are really are these are blowing you
know school take square cage type hablo
y
it's a you know really quite mate but
apart from that I don't I what else you
would take it's like it's just too old
and it's a shame because this was and I
really fairly Cass I guess backing you
know the early two thousands so how
about we pal this thing up see if it
works after all these years i think the
odds are reasonable that it's actually
gonna work so you know I'm doing because
they've engineered this side you know
quite well yeah in the terms of thermal
performance I don't know did they get
hard or whatever but anyway here we go
love you so here we go to power this
thing up
whoa yeah that's loud
you see those lids down there not sure
if you saw that but it yeah it's loud
Wow and i would donate the lid on it but
hey look at that we're in like Flynn
beauty that still works
it needs an OS it's going where's my
always and there's the intel chipset for
those playing along at home I don't know
why bother looking up the number but the
board looks quite alright got no
problems no issues with that whatsoever
looks very neat and tidy and it still
works a treat
does anyone want to see the g four
processors mm here we go to LA it's my
job i thought it was just a heatsink
it's not it's a complete module look at
that Wow and the huge begot high-speed
board-to-board interconnect there Nate
that's underneath the module and there
is a Rome you can't have to tell that's
a jewel processor just look at the
layout here are the BGA layout right
there clearly two separate parts and I
know the apple fanboys won't be happy
until I you lift the skirt up on this
but here we go and we're going to some
current shuts down there do we
I think we might so here we go tomorrow
and you're ready for it
are you ready just tiny little look tiny
little bit of grace
tada allow the g4 jewel g4 processes are
terribly exciting is it and we'll just
give those a bit of a tidy-up and we'll
be able to sit get the isopropyl alcohol
in there and i love that
well that's boring doesn't even say g4
on it anyway app year believe these a
jewel RG for processing it's a nice
module based approach look at the bypass
caps directly on their the wide ones as
well for the arm extra low inductance
there none of this site narrow bypass
kappa rubbish so yeah they really need
to know what pretty decent processor
back in the day
and I'd be guessing that these are
patient memory I would presume I don't
know about the Apple architecture and
things like that so yeah check out the
power supply stuff for the cause here
for the to process all of the one module
is a really nice design but well yeah
that's because look at that we're going
to be gassing doctors were because the
IOT massive amount of localized
filtering and things like that and that
would be our driver right there but your
nice big high current traces beautiful
check it out just to give you a scale of
how big this thing is it look almost so
they go i hope you enjoyed that short
dumpster diver these two classic apple
xserve rackmount one-inch rackmount
server systems which as I said I don't
think they were very popular if anyone's
got any experiences with them these
systems please share it down below but
you can put these in like racks with
raid drives and everything else you
could have clusters of them and all
sorts of stuff and but you know that
were recently powerful back in their day
but i don't think that they were
successful for whatever reason and they
uselessly these days like a dual
processor g4 and I 1.3 guide to say it
but you know and noisy as anything and
probably you know I power hogs and
they're just not they're not really
worth anything so I don't know working
on ebay for twenty bucks maybe hmm
anyway you want to discuss it jump on
down below all the links to the form and
youtube comments on the list of jazz I
try to read more
hope you enjoyed it catch you next time
check out what I scored in the dumpster
three beautiful apple powermac g5 I know
they're absolutely ancient they date
from about 2,000 of three or thereabout
so good 12 years old and pretty much
useless today but look at them a
beautiful aluminium cases is just
absolutely stunning design
let's take a quick look at him now all
three look absolutely identical but
they're not as well