Not really a "conquest" per se, since I bought it retail (all told around $10K), but I realized I never posted it here. Meet my new-to-me dual-core 4.2GHz POWER6 p520 with 8GB RAM, GXT145P video and three 15Krpm 146GB SAS drives in RAID 5 running AIX 6.1. This weekend I need to get it up to Tech Level 6 and then have it start subsuming network functions, taking over for three of my machines ultimately. It's so fast!

It's interesting to compare it to my Apple Network Server, which is, as everybody I'm sure knows, Apple's only non-Macintosh server and also runs AIX (in this case AIX 4). The POWER6 has all the advanced features of newer Power Systems boxes and ASMI for low-level administration, though its control panel is so primitive compared to the "luxurious" user-programmable LCD on the ANS. However, booting the POWER6 into Open Firmware feels like working on God's Power Mac, and obviously when they both enter the kernel their /dev/lft0s function identically. This is nice, because this machine is the ANS' eventual replacement (though I'm still going to keep the ANS as a toybox).

http://www.floodgap.com/iv/1149

Unboxing

http://www.floodgap.com/iv/1150

Booting for the first time

http://www.floodgap.com/iv/1201

diag and lft0