This thing worth a crap?

[blade_146]

So my boss was cleaning out a storage closet at work this week and lined the back hallway with 5 old pcs, keyboards, mice, nice dell trinitron monitor and some other crap and im not one to let free stuff go to waste lol. so i loaded it all up and brought it home. Most of it is crap. But the one thats really got me interested is an HP Netserver E60. It has dual 450 p3's and built in scsi. You guys reckon this thing could be of any use? I havent fired it up yet so i dont even know if it works. Heck another of the boxes had 3 scsi plextor cdrw's in it.

Reason im asking is that im starting back to school in a couple weeks for Network Admin and CCNA. I figured i might be able to use it as a server for some extra practice at home maybe. I know its not fast by any means but i got excited when i cracked the case and saw dualies in there. Always wanted to play with a setup like that.

[Justlookin]

Believe it or not, there are alot of production shops that have old computer controled machines that will even still use old 286's to run there machine programs. They don't need much to make em work and alot of em even still run DOS Programs. Not saying you got 286's, but those units are worth something to someone. Heck, I built an old 286 back in the 80's and when it got too outdated for me to use anymore, I gave it to Koo Koo Mouse, who works in a printed circuit board shop. They used it to run one of the old circuit board machines they had at the time. Koo Koo told me a couple weeks or more ago that that old PC is still running the same machine and has never crashed or broke down as long as they have had it. Don't know what you got, but eBay it if you don't need it. Some one may want that older stuff yet.

[FlyingPenguin]

Seems like a perfect rig to play around with a server OS on. More than fast enough for Server 2003 if you put at least 384Mb in there. It would probably run server 2008 just fine also.

Sure you could run a server OS on any box, but this will also give you a feel for the hardware. There IS a difference between a plain PC and a true server. Architecture is much more rugged, designed for maximum up time without errors. That's why just putting a server OS in an off the shelf PC is not a real server. A real server has drives optimized to run continuously, ECC memory to prevent crashes due to memory errors, and a hardened bus to keep extraneous noise from entering the mobo. That makes for a very different looking PC inside.

[blade_146]

I do know it has 512megs in it and a scsi hdd. Plus the dual 450 P3's. Tell you one thing. That rig is heavy as hell lol

[Justlookin]

FP has the answers on the server... mile
Follow up on my post:
Left something out on my previous post. I said nothing on the servers, cuzz I no nothing (as Clink would say), but eBaying those old PC's might pay for your server upgrades or at least help. They don't need much to sell them in most cases, but make sure they have good MOBO's before ya try to sell em. Most shops have plenty of other old plug in boards laying around that they can plug in to run the machines. OK, I shut up now!

[ZYFER]

Yup, a good server play rig. I've done Server 2003 on just a single P3 450, the second will help. It takes very little to run basic server tasks. Unless the dude has to do some heavy processing, it will generally be fine.