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B S Magnet

macrumors 603
Original poster
In which Linus, of LinusTechTips, digs into an Xserve3,1 and… well, watch away:



To longtime Xserve users and older colo admins, it’d be worth reading your observations on this and reflecting on your own experiences, past and present. I can count on two fingers the number of times I’ve been face-to-face with a running Xserve of any iteration. The main thing I recall is how incredibly loud they are with those, like, seven barrel fans.
 

theMarble

macrumors 65816
Sep 27, 2020
1,019
1,496
Earth, Sol System, Alpha Quadrant
I watched it earlier.

Pretty good video, didn't realise the RAID cards were on an MXM-like board!
Kind annoyed that they didn't cover the dosdude1/OCLP patchers though, makes it sound like El Cap is the hard limit, even though with some upgrades, Ventura will run great on it. It's the kind of fact that LTT would typically mention.

I have only ever seen 1 Xserve in person, and it was a 1,1 2006 model. Has to be loudest computer I have ever heard at idle. You're certainly right about those tiny, high-RPM fans. Couldn't decide whether to get it or not, came back a week later and it had been sold.

In terms of experience with running/maintaining servers, I've only ever dealt with standard Macs running some version of Mac OS X Server (a Mac mini and a PowerBook or two I think) and Linux systems. Never personally got to play around with an Xserve though.

Who knows, maybe I'll pick one up some day...

Have absolutely zero idea what I would use it for though, my main old-Mac jobs are being taken care of by my 2011 Pro and the 2007 mini, and once the mini dies/gets too old it will mostly likely be replaced by 2009 mini (really want to get the dual-drive server model) or a more modern Linux box depending on how much my server shelf grows. When the 2011 Pro has done its dash, it will likely be replaced by a Sandy Bridge or Westmere/Gulftown machine.
 
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TheShortTimer

macrumors 68040
Mar 27, 2017
3,249
5,638
London, UK
Kind annoyed that they didn't cover the dosdude1/OCLP patchers though, makes it sound like El Cap is the hard limit, even though with some upgrades, Ventura will run great on it. It's the kind of fact that LTT would typically mention.

As you're aware, there are long established Apple related forums where this information is unknown and people in search of advice are misinformed that their computers are limited to Lion. :D
 

rampancy

macrumors 6502a
Jul 22, 2002
741
999
Just watched it; it was a pretty good video, for an LTT episode covering an Apple product.

Regarding his efforts with getting the OS to run; along with being a little surprised that he didn't cover the dosdude1/OCLP patches, I feel like what could have made life a lot easier for him was running wowfunhappy's HTTPS/SSL patch to fix the connectivity issues on Snow Leopard.

And regarding the issue with getting El Capitan working, I don't think it's *that* unreasonable to experience an issue with running the installer on a system with a newer OS; that's something that I've also encountered when trying to install Snow Leopard on a disk with a system running Lion. That all being said, I don't think it would have killed Apple to have put something in the OS installer that would have allowed you to do that.

Also, with regard to the graphics card; is the MXM-based GPU the same as the ones used in that era's iMacs?

Oh, and it utterly stinks how the drive were vendor firmware locked. :(
 
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