Refurb weekend: Cobalt RaQ 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Refurb weekend: Cobalt RaQ 2

#11

Post by rcarmo » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 12:28 PM UTC

I ran several RaQ3s at an ISP, and had a Qube 3 for a while (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruicarmo/16490971544/in/album-...). I loved the things and did several backports of RHEL stuff to run on the Intel variants.

When they were discontinued, I was allowed to take some of them home. Had to give them up, though, because I lacked the room to keep the boxes around, and at the time I also lacked the time to maintain software or investigate hardware upgrades.

The saddest thing for me is that today I would love to have kept the enclosures and PSUs (I’d likely have stuffed them full of Raspberry Pi compute modules, or Celeron mini PC motherboards, and hooked up an MCU to the display and buttons…)

But some of them were online and running at my former employer until 2018 or so, which is nothing short of amazing.

In case someone is interested, I have a bunch of old resources here: https://taoofmac.com/space/com/cobalt

I also kept a copy of the hacking FAQ: https://taoofmac.com/space/com/cobalt/faq

Re: Refurb weekend: Cobalt RaQ 2

#12

Post by rcarmo » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 12:33 PM UTC

RedShift1 wrote: post #5

I still have a perfectly working Cobalt Raq 550 sitting in my closet... Pentium III 1 GHz, 1 GB of RAM. Don't know what to do with it. It's also extremely noisy so can't use it as a server or router at home.

I would replace the fans, to start with. The 550 could take extra RAM (see https://taoofmac.com/space/com/cobalt/raq550 and https://taoofmac.com/space/com/cobalt/faq), and it was possible to get a decent(ish) kernel on it.

Alternatively, consider getting a cheap Celeron N5105 mini PC (or two - two should fit in the case) and adapting the PSU for it… Might be a fun project if you can do it non-destructively.

Re: Refurb weekend: Cobalt RaQ 2

#13

Post by mortenlarsen » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 12:43 PM UTC

I still have a Cobalt CacheRaQ (caching proxy server) and a Cobalt VelociRaptor (Firewall) (the blue Cobalt branded one from before they became Symantec products).

Re: Refurb weekend: Cobalt RaQ 2

#14

Post by Gordonjcp » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 12:56 PM UTC

rcarmo wrote: post #11

I ran several RaQ3s at an ISP, and had a Qube 3 for a while ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruicarmo/16490971544/in/album-... ). I loved the things and did several backports of RHEL stuff to run on the Intel variants. When they were discontinued, I was allowed to take some of them home. Had to give them up, though, because I lacked the room to keep the boxes around, and at the time I also lacked the time to maintain…

> AMD K6-2 processor (300 or 450 MHz)

In the early 2000s I worked for a streaming media company where most of the desktops were AMD K6-2 450s. Except mine, because I splashed out and bought a Duron 700 with 256MB of RAM which I soon upgraded to 512MB, and fitted an ATI Rage 128 Pro, with the thick purple dangly-dongle for AV connections, and a FireWire card for capturing DV. Quite the beast for running Adobe Premiere 4!

Re: Refurb weekend: Cobalt RaQ 2

#15

Post by justsomehnguy » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 1:20 PM UTC

metadat wrote: post #2

The moment I laid eyes on the grainy thumbnail with the hard drive in frame, I recognized it: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg... A Quantum Fireball. Full-size image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg... Something about the sticker placement and black lettering directly applied to the metal cover, I've never seen another hard drive with a similar aesthetic. Those…

I still have a shoe-box filled with 20-40-80GB IDE drives.

Along with a P3 box which I don't have a slightest idea when and how I acquired it, except what I did bought Edison Gold 16 for it.

If anyone one who wants to indulge in a bout of nostalgia (and annoy everyone around you): https://youtu.be/k6xXihb8hv8?t=817

Re: Refurb weekend: Cobalt RaQ 2

#16

Post by tbyehl » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

I wish I had marked the calendar to commemorate the day we turned off the last of the Cobalts at a data center I worked in from 2003-2010. We had a suite that was almost entirely dedicated to them, rows of racks with nothing but Cobalt, thousands of them. Customers were so attached to them that they were happy to continue paying 1999 prices for hosting, so it was difficult letting go of those fat margins.

Re: Refurb weekend: Cobalt RaQ 2

#17

Post by throwawaaarrgh » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 2:13 PM UTC

These things were so insecure they were used to train script kiddies on basic hacking techniques. Many fond memories of ".... wait, wtf?!" A simpler time...

Re: Refurb weekend: Cobalt RaQ 2

#18

Post by PaulHoule » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 2:15 PM UTC

A friend of mine had an early access Qube that we ran qmail on (back then I was an anti-Windows activist and a djb cultist.) The machine worked pretty well.

It fell down during the "Love Letter" virus attack and to get it back up I had to write a script that scanned the logs and inserted firewall rules to block virus-infected machines.

The worst problem it had was that the system clock ran 15% slow so it had to be resynced frequently with ntp.

Re: Refurb weekend: Cobalt RaQ 2

#19

Post by harel » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 2:31 PM UTC

I remember when they came out I thought, from a purely aesthetic perspective, that they look so cool. Just like the sound modules in my music studio (at the time).

Re: Refurb weekend: Cobalt RaQ 2

#20

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 3:17 PM UTC

harel wrote: post #19

I remember when they came out I thought, from a purely aesthetic perspective, that they look so cool. Just like the sound modules in my music studio (at the time).

[deleted]