I've been looking at more shite that my university has been throwing out recently, and among a load of crappy old Wang and Dell monitors and some shitty Dell 486s, I found something actually worth taking! It's a PC apparently actually *made by* Intel! I didn't even know Intel made PCs From the front of the PC there's no branding - it's a pretty plain looking case, but a pretty well-built one. Only the sticker on the back actually had the Intel logo, which also stated the serial number and the usual other stuff (power requirements etc.). The case was labelled "Intel Comm 1" which is the name of one of the file servers for the department of Electronic & Computer Engineering - it must have been upgraded recently or something. So I was hoping it would be something pretty bitchin' like a dual Pentium II system or something. Unfortunately it turned out to be a single Pentium Pro 200MHz - not as cool as some multi-CPU system, but still it's something I've never seen before in real life (and I remember when Pentium Pros were ultra expensive!). Besides the CPU there's not really anything special - 64MB RAM, (possibly broken) floppy and a pretty old Pioneer CD-ROM drive, crappy old ATI graphics card (though at least it's not on-board - thank God!), and an Intel NIC. Not even any hard disk -_- Seems to work fine though after slapping in some random old HDD with windows 98 on it ^_^. But the whole Intel PC thing is still confusing the hell out of me. Did Intel mass-produce server PCs at some stage? Though this one barely even looks like a server - it's just a single-CPU ATX mobo in an average size tower case and an on-board IDE controller (no SCSI or anything fancy). It said "Made in Ireland" on the label too - it kinda makes sense as there's an Intel factory in Leixslip (some boghole in the middle of nowhere), but AFAIK they only manufacture wafers there - so maybe it was manufactured under license by some other company like Dell or Gateway? Or even better - maybe it was some sort of prototype or demo model?! I'll make some pictures when I get it home if anyone's interested.
nah fairly sure its full chips as well. Look out for the white trucks leaving the plant - van infront and van behind full of intel goodness
Nah, they don't even make the full things in Leixlip - they just make the wafers, then they're exported to the Phillipines or whatever other 3rd world country to be put in the full "packages" with the pins and stuff.
Looks like they did, found out through the crucial site: http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listmodel.asp?cat=RAM&mfr=Intel&productline=Intel+Servers&submit=Go
Good luck finding SIMM RAM modules. The PC i owned before this one was actually a Pentium Pro machine and it kicked my fathers PC, a Pentium 233mhz mmx CPU. There is an overdrive CPU you can put in there, most likely, that will upgrade it to a 333mhz Pentium2. Slap in about 128mb RAM and you can turn that into a custom Router.
Lol, never thought of looking up PCs that way! Though I searched all the models listed there, and they're all proper rack-mounted server dealies, mostly newer stuff with multiple P2's and Xeons...
Those 300/333Mhz Overdrive CPUs are quite rare (at least on German Ebay etc.) its quite a collectors item. You can also use them - like the PPros on dual-boards. A 4 x 200Mhz PPro Siemens Primergy is what I got my nick from btw. That enormous cube is still laying in my cellar
I've heard that there were as much as 6 x 200mhz PPros. Such a motherboard like that would cost about $40,000 back in 1997.
I've got shitloads of them! Only probelm is that they're mostly crappy small ones, and mostly FPM - that's what I get for stealing junk out of 486s -_- The Pentium Pro will certainly be an upgrade from my current auxiliary PC - a P75 overclocked to 90MHz :smt023. It'll make a nice new home for the Voodoo2 as well!
