So I own a government server with information on it...
Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:51 am
This computer I have was owned by the State of Texas Office of the Governor's Multimedia Program from 1992 to 1996. It is a Hewlett Packard 9000 model 822s. From the limited knowledge on the Internet about this beast, I know that it runs proprietarily on HP-UX, the Unix operating system licensed by HP. I also know from the original purchase order that the tax payers gave up $52,000 for it, not including it's workstations. It is my understanding that this computer can only be accessed via means of the proper terminal unit for this series (800). I've seen the terminal/workstation combinations on eBay for more than I would bother risking, since it would work only by chance. I would also have to buy a special power cable for it, because HP thought it'd be cute to use some crazy ass foreign looking plug. It's like a standard power plug, but it utilizes an extra prong for some oddball reason... Probably an extra ground wire or some bullshit to keep it safe from lightning, but that's pure speculation.
There are a lot of ports on the back for some sort of pseudo-SCSI optional external HDD array, as well as many ports which I surmise are for networking. Five years ago, when I acquired it in Amarillo, I didn't know what I was buying. I just liked the case, and since it was so huge I figured that it would be a perfect housing for a 4 or 8-way CPU system, because at the time AMD was shouting to no end that in just a few years everyone would have quad-CPU Hammer PCs that would be able to solve pi in ten seconds and be at that always low 2000 AMD price, when CPUs were still $100 for the next to best one available.
It was in a warehouse of sorts, unprotected from dust and varmints. To my surprise, when I opened the server (much akin to opening the hood of a car, actually), I immediately noticed the pristine condition it was in. The metal was nearly polished, and there was absolutely no dust to be seen. It was almost a shock, because I've opened computers that were clean just a month previously, but then were full of dust bunnies.
There are giant fans inside, and it's really a marvel of engineering that they could fit all of this into the space it's in. There is so much shit compressed in such a small space that there are cards going in all directions, not inches apart from one another (due to the fact that this, like many older computers, has many boards for different functions, and not just one motherboard.) There are hard drives in there too, quite a few actually. I'm guessing from the price tag and the era in which this was purchased (also factoring in eventual upgrades through the years) that the drives are each 100-400MB in capacity. For storing text records and various digital transactions, this would be an incredible amount of space.
Due to the rugged aspects of Unix, I'm betting that there is still some life left in the machine, but unfortunately, as previously stated, I can't do much without the rare terminal/workstation.
In 1996, do you think they would have wiped the drives clean? Do you think that there is any possibility of the drives still being magnetically and mechanically sound enough to handle any jarring? I suppose the proper people to ask are the friendly data recovery experts... They're friendly because they often charge $200 for every 1GB they restore. Who knows what they'd charge for such an old and no doubt difficult to work with system.
Shit... I wonder if Bush and Rove could have played some ancient solitaire on this? "Karl, let me play!" "It's solitaire, George." "I want to play. Let's team up, n' show'em who's boss... Just like we did to that liberal bitch Ann Richards." "Governor, this is a game for just one pl---- Nevermind."
Right now I'm using the 400 pound computer as a stand for one of my monitors, and my scanner. Talk about creative (lazy) recycling, haha!
There are a lot of ports on the back for some sort of pseudo-SCSI optional external HDD array, as well as many ports which I surmise are for networking. Five years ago, when I acquired it in Amarillo, I didn't know what I was buying. I just liked the case, and since it was so huge I figured that it would be a perfect housing for a 4 or 8-way CPU system, because at the time AMD was shouting to no end that in just a few years everyone would have quad-CPU Hammer PCs that would be able to solve pi in ten seconds and be at that always low 2000 AMD price, when CPUs were still $100 for the next to best one available.
It was in a warehouse of sorts, unprotected from dust and varmints. To my surprise, when I opened the server (much akin to opening the hood of a car, actually), I immediately noticed the pristine condition it was in. The metal was nearly polished, and there was absolutely no dust to be seen. It was almost a shock, because I've opened computers that were clean just a month previously, but then were full of dust bunnies.
There are giant fans inside, and it's really a marvel of engineering that they could fit all of this into the space it's in. There is so much shit compressed in such a small space that there are cards going in all directions, not inches apart from one another (due to the fact that this, like many older computers, has many boards for different functions, and not just one motherboard.) There are hard drives in there too, quite a few actually. I'm guessing from the price tag and the era in which this was purchased (also factoring in eventual upgrades through the years) that the drives are each 100-400MB in capacity. For storing text records and various digital transactions, this would be an incredible amount of space.
Due to the rugged aspects of Unix, I'm betting that there is still some life left in the machine, but unfortunately, as previously stated, I can't do much without the rare terminal/workstation.
In 1996, do you think they would have wiped the drives clean? Do you think that there is any possibility of the drives still being magnetically and mechanically sound enough to handle any jarring? I suppose the proper people to ask are the friendly data recovery experts... They're friendly because they often charge $200 for every 1GB they restore. Who knows what they'd charge for such an old and no doubt difficult to work with system.
Shit... I wonder if Bush and Rove could have played some ancient solitaire on this? "Karl, let me play!" "It's solitaire, George." "I want to play. Let's team up, n' show'em who's boss... Just like we did to that liberal bitch Ann Richards." "Governor, this is a game for just one pl---- Nevermind."
Right now I'm using the 400 pound computer as a stand for one of my monitors, and my scanner. Talk about creative (lazy) recycling, haha!
