As I have mentioned previously, part of the motivation for finally getting the servers moved out of my apartment was due to renovations occurring. Those are pretty much done, and Lauren and I are slowly moving back into the spaces previously invaded by contractors. However, that moving is being somewhat hindered by the remnants of the infamous, and oh-so-loud, black box which used to live in the corner of my apartment and suck down my finances via overly large electric bills.
In order to remove these from my life, I've decided to auction off the pieces of this that I no longer want/need. So, if you want/need:
- Really old and outdated computer equipment.
- A very strange piece of Goats Memorabilia.
This is your chance.
I'm too lazy to get everything up on to eBay all at once, so I'll just keep updating the links in this post as I get the pieces available. The things we will be selling are:
- A 48 High Black Box Comm Cabinet:
This held the source of much frustration over the years. The container of the hum of machines, always somewhat disruptive to any conversation you may be trying to have in the room at the same time as the site was running.
- APC Smart-UPS 1400 (Rack Mountable):
This is the bottom piece of equipment in the picture to the right. While its technical specs can be found here, what's really important to know is that during the great northeast blackout of 2003, this kept the site going for about an extra 15 minutes of the 48 hours or so that we were without power.
- Bertha:
This is the black thing directly above the UPS. Ahh, bertha. She's a vintage 1999 VA Linux "Varserver 700". While some may care about her now woefully underpowered 2 500 MHz Pentium IIIs, her woefully inadequate 512 MB of RAM, her 4 AtlasIV 18GB 7200 rpm (Mylex RAID 5) drives, or her almost entirely unused Seagate Sidewinder 25/50 GB tape drive. What's really important is that for over 5 years she was the Goats database machine. She served us well...she was the only one of the otherwise crappy VALinux machines we bought to not crap out after a couple of years). I was quite sad when I had to wipe her brain (or reformat her drives, depending on how you look at it) in preparation for selling.
- Cisco 1720 Router:
I always felt bad for our ISPs. It seemed that they kept either going out of business or getting bought by someone else. This played hell with our various contracts. The first T-1 ISP we had was called Net-Tel. The nicest thing about them was that right before going out of business in 2000, they were about to upgrade me to some different circuit. I never got switched, but they did send me the new router I was going to need, right before they went and declared bankruptcy and got bought by Epoch Internet, who lasted about a year before suffering the same fate. I like to think it was our fault, although they like to think that they don't even know who we are. End Result: I have a Cisco 1720 Router (with WIC-1DSU-T1) in its original packaging with all its documentation and probably with whatever configuration information they had loaded onto it prior to sending it to me.
- Netopia T-1 Router:
Instead of using the fancy Cisco router, I used that green thing sitting on top of bertha in the picture. It's a Netopia Router. It's irritatingly non-rack mountable, but it's really good at sitting that and looking pretty. I could find almost no information about this online, but if you care, I have its manuals, and its part number is "PN660-T1". All Netopia like to admit about it is that they no longer support it.
- Black Box 8-Port ServSelect (with bunches `o cables):
All the way at the top of the rack (underneath the Mac Plus I kept on the LAN just for fun) you can see the KVM switch I used to control our machines. In reality, it was easier to just ssh into them from my Mac, but when you folks would really screw them up (I'm looking at you, Zamphir), sometimes I couldn't get to them via the network and had to do things the old fashioned way. If you have a USB keyboard, this probably isn't for you. But if you're old-school, and think that PS/2 keyboards are what we should have stuck with, then you're in luck. Black Box has a page about these here. However, I'm super-generous. If you get this, you get my entire set-up...because I want it all gone. This includes four 6 foot cables to connect it to your servers, a 20 foot cable to connect to an included 2-port ServSwitch Jr.. I then had this switch shared with my desktop machines, and all the other cables I have lying around that weren't the right ones for what I was trying to accomplish.
- Adesso Tru-Form USB Keyboard:
What does this have to do with Goats? Nothing! This is just my old keyboard. But I probably coded a good 25% of the bugs that irritate you on the site every day with this thing. It's missing a couple of keys, for the same reason I stopped using it. The keyboard drawer on my desk only has 2.5" clearance, and this keyboard is higher than that...or at least a few of the back keys are. The ones I could find from my unsuccessful attempt to close the keyboard drawer are included. All the lower keys are there and were functional as of a couple of years ago when I last used it.
So there you have it. If you have any questions about any of these things, let me know. Otherwise, please help me remove these from my life, and add them to yours. If you don't need a crappy USB keyboard, try to think of a friend who might. I mean, who doesn't think that a server cabinet makes a great gift for a loved one? It's better than roses!!!
