53 ms·

To be pedantic, none of those machines are “servers”; they are all desktop machines.

by teddyh 2y ago

johnklos 2y ago
Anything can be a server if it's set up to serve, so the distinction isn't useful here. Many people, educational organizations, companies, corporations, et cetera bought machines which have a desktop form factor which were used as servers.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  Yes, but there was literally a parallel "SPARCserver" line of systems that were differentiated by lack of a graphics card and a server-oriented OS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation That being said, most orgs had little reservations about putting workstations into server roles, including every company I worked for, such as a regional ISP.
  - hapless 2y ago
    Unlike prior Sun systems there was no rack-optimized direct counterpart to the SS20 the "SPARCServer 20" was a super rare badging for like, workgroup servers the big rackmount units for the sun4m era were still VME systems: 4/670, 4/690, etc
icedchai 2y ago
Technically, yes. Though many early Internet providers used SparcStations and Ultras as "servers", generally either web servers or for shell accounts.
- jerrysievert 2y ago
  we (the ISP I worked for in the late 90's) used sparc 5 clones for desktops and mission critical things like DNS, sparc 10 and 20 clones for hosting and account management. they were workhorses for what we tasked them to.
  - nineteen999 2y ago
    Similar, I assembled a system with a board/CPU purchased from Sun Microelectronics and we ran part of a small ISP on it for years on Solaris. We also put together a couple of DEC Alpha 21164's on the AlphaPC 164LX boards running Debian Linux. Those were fun times you could find some neat non-x86 stuff if you looked back in those days.
    - icedchai 2y ago
      There was so much more variety in the 90's. At one company I worked for, we had Suns, SGIs, Alphas, HPs...
rnxrx 2y ago
In practice at the time I know we used Sparc 10 and Sparc 20 pizza boxes as servers. Until the various Ultras came out it was pretty common to see stacks of them running firewalls, dns (...and sometimes nis) or web servers next to the big iron running databases and such. The 10 and 20 in particular had a much longer lifespan than a lot of folks realize. There were cheap (for the time) upgrades to put quad CPU's and a decent selection of SCSI HBA's, Ethernet NIC's and even some ATM interfaces. I know I still saw those units fairly commonly well into the mid 2000's.
fsckboy 2y ago
>To be pedantic, none of those machines are “servers”; they are all desktop machines. not quibbling with your contribution, it's valuable. But if we're going to be more pedantic, a "server" is a piece of software, a single service running on a box and, in the realm of tcp/ip, listening to a port. I'm reading this on my X server.

To be pedantic, none of those machines are “servers”; they are all desktop machines.

by teddyh 2y ago

To be pedantic, none of those machines are “servers”; they are all desktop machines.

Anything can be a server if it's set up to serve, so the distinction isn't useful here. Many people, educational organizations, companies, corporations, et cetera bought machines which have a desktop form factor which were used as servers.

AStonesThrow 2y ago
Yes, but there was literally a parallel "SPARCserver" line of systems that were differentiated by lack of a graphics card and a server-oriented OS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation That being said, most orgs had little reservations about putting workstations into server roles, including every company I worked for, such as a regional ISP.
- hapless 2y ago
  Unlike prior Sun systems there was no rack-optimized direct counterpart to the SS20 the "SPARCServer 20" was a super rare badging for like, workgroup servers the big rackmount units for the sun4m era were still VME systems: 4/670, 4/690, etc

icedchai 2y ago

Technically, yes. Though many early Internet providers used SparcStations and Ultras as "servers", generally either web servers or for shell accounts.

jerrysievert 2y ago
we (the ISP I worked for in the late 90's) used sparc 5 clones for desktops and mission critical things like DNS, sparc 10 and 20 clones for hosting and account management. they were workhorses for what we tasked them to.
- nineteen999 2y ago
  Similar, I assembled a system with a board/CPU purchased from Sun Microelectronics and we ran part of a small ISP on it for years on Solaris. We also put together a couple of DEC Alpha 21164's on the AlphaPC 164LX boards running Debian Linux. Those were fun times you could find some neat non-x86 stuff if you looked back in those days.
  - icedchai 2y ago
    There was so much more variety in the 90's. At one company I worked for, we had Suns, SGIs, Alphas, HPs...

rnxrx 2y ago

In practice at the time I know we used Sparc 10 and Sparc 20 pizza boxes as servers. Until the various Ultras came out it was pretty common to see stacks of them running firewalls, dns (...and sometimes nis) or web servers next to the big iron running databases and such. The 10 and 20 in particular had a much longer lifespan than a lot of folks realize. There were cheap (for the time) upgrades to put quad CPU's and a decent selection of SCSI HBA's, Ethernet NIC's and even some ATM interfaces. I know I still saw those units fairly commonly well into the mid 2000's.

fsckboy 2y ago

>To be pedantic, none of those machines are “servers”; they are all desktop machines. not quibbling with your contribution, it's valuable. But if we're going to be more pedantic, a "server" is a piece of software, a single service running on a box and, in the realm of tcp/ip, listening to a port. I'm reading this on my X server.