Subject: FA: Motorola Powerstack E PowerPC

From: Louis Florit <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Jul 21 13:11:00 2003

Hi everyone, I've got a rare, almost borderline classic-cmp system that is 
very interesting up for auction on ebay.  I'm hoping a gentle soul will 
take it in and give it some play time.

Pictures of the boombox stereo looking system:
http://www.hudat.com/~florit/20030624-MotorolaPowerstack/

Getting to the mid-90s there was a lot of evolution in processor designs 
taking place; there was a question as to which company would lead the 
way into the future; some big players at the time were MIPS, Digital's 
Alpha, The IBM/Motorola/Apple consortium led PowerPC, and of course, 
Intel's x86 line.  There was plenty of doubt at the time, because 
Microsoft, who was just then putting out Windows NT 4, supported all of 
these processors!  We all know how the face off ended up.

The system I have here is a Motorola Powerstack.  It is super rare, I've 
only seen one other on ebay in 3 years.  Its in great shape.  I can run a 
myriad of operating systems: IBM's AIX, WinNT 4, Linux PPC and aparently a 
beta version of Solaris 2.5 for PowerPCs.  As I understand, this system 
runs the PReP Openfirmware (replaces functions of PC's Bios is a more 
clean manner).

Its called a PowerStack because you can add drive chassis by stacking them 
on top and adding power and scsi chain cables.  In effect, you can make 
this a low profile computer by removing the section that contains the dat 
drive, currently. 

Motorola PowerPC 603e, 100mhz, 64MB ram. SCSI is onboard SCSI-2, with two
one inch high removable media device bays, one one inch high non-removable
bay for disk, and the scsi expansion enclosure. This particular model is
loaded with a thin profile CDROM, floppy drive, 4 gig harddrive, and DAT
tape drive (unknown size; 1 or 2g?).  It has all kinds of interesting
ports on the backside. Video is on a PCI card (Cirrus Logic?), and audio
is onboard. There are three PCI slots on a riser board.

This system is in distinguished company: It has an actual removable key to 
start and stop the system.  I'm including the system manual, very useful 
to find out how to assemble/dissasemble the system to get to the insides.

Included are the cables to connect the expansion bay scsi. I will also
ship the original copy of Sun Solaris 2.5 Beta that was inside the
Powerstack when I got it and the CDs with the debian linux ppc I was
planning to install. I did not complete the install of debian linux, so it
does not boot into the OS;  there are some configuration issues to work
out- I'd recommend a fresher and newer version of Debian anyhow, as this
one is at least 3 years old.

Here's the auction link, if you think you're interested:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2742423893&category=4610

If you have any questions, please ask away.

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From: Vintage Computer Festival <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Jul 21 15:44:01 2003

> only seen one other on ebay in 3 years.  Its in great shape.  I can run a

Just an aside here...just because something doesn't show up on eBay in 3
years, it doesn't mean there's not a warehouse of them somewhere.  It
doesn't mean there is, but it doesn't mean there isn't.

Basically, eBay should not be used as the sole indicator of something's
rarity.

That being said, your Motorola Powerstack is indeed pretty rare.  I've
never seen one before.

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

 * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon Jul 21 22:34:00 2003

These aren't as rare as you would think.  I've passed up at least four in
the last couple of years.

Peace...  Sridhar

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003, Louis Florit wrote:

> Hi everyone, I've got a rare, almost borderline classic-cmp system that
> is very interesting up for auction on ebay.  I'm hoping a gentle soul
> will take it in and give it some play time.
>
> only seen one other on ebay in 3 years.  Its in great shape.  I can run
> a myriad of operating systems: IBM's AIX, WinNT 4, Linux PPC and
> aparently a beta version of Solaris 2.5 for PowerPCs.  As I understand,
> this system runs the PReP Openfirmware (replaces functions of PC's Bios
> is a more clean manner).