SUN COBALT RAQ 2 64 MB 10.2 GB MIPS CPU WEB MAIL DNS

SUN COBALT RAQ 2 64 MB  10.2 GB MIPS CPU  WEB MAIL DNS  SERVER

OS RAQ 2 LOADED AND TESTED  ready to ship today worldwide

MIPS  CPU HARD TO FIND

COBALT RAQ2 SERVER 128MB 10.2 GB HD RAQ EARS COST $17.00  EXTRA

Hard to find item. Great  for Colleges, Schools and Universities  or private or business use. It will be the best server  to use in IRAQ  or Afganistan.

Great software and great price.  RAQ2 OS Restore CD included  for download and hard copy.

Congratulations on Choosing a Cobalt RaQ 2. Your new server appliance delivers a full suite of Internet services with remote administration capabilities all packaged in a single rack unit height, industry standard enclosure. Important Information This page can easily be replaced with your own page. To replace this page, transfer your new content to the directory /home/sites/home/web/
RaQ Server Management This server appliance supports browser-based administration at the following URL: http://<your.host.domain>/admin/. You may want to bookmark this page for future use.  Virtual Site Management Once the server administrator has set up a new site (i.e. a virtual site), the site administrator can administer that site through the URL http://<your.virtual.domain>/siteadmin/	Personal Account Management Users with accounts on the server can access and modify their personal profile information (e.g., password, automatic email response, email forwarding) through the URL http://<your.host.domain>/personal/  Product Registration Click here to register

COBALT RAQ2 SERVER 64MB 15.3GB HD
	The Cobalt RaQ2 server 128 MB 10.2GB NEW SEAGATE The RaQ2 is a one-rack-unit tall (one unit is about 1.75 inches), cobalt-blue, "pizza-box" shaped system. In an ISP's equipment room, it could easily be mistaken for a network router or remote access server. Even at this size, the machine has 3.5-inch internal IDE/Ultra ATA hard drive -- a maximum of 16.8 GB storage currently -- and 256 MB of RAM. It runs a custom RISC processor based on the MIPS R4000 core at 250 MHz, and would probably be comparable to the speed of a 350 MHz Pentium II. It can also support external SCSI storage devices, and it now has two dual-mode 10/100 Mbps Ethernet ports. It also includes a serial port in case you want to connect it to a console terminal. This is a reasonable improvement over the older RaQ model, which had a 150 MHz processor, a single Ethernet connection, and no external storage options. Priced identically, the new version tries to keep up with the times. On the software side, however, it lags about three or four months behind the most current technology -- which isn't all bad. There's nothing worse than putting untried, untested software on a server appliance that is supposed to be the height of reliability. Here's a rundown of the system software: Linux kernel version 2.0.34 for MIPS processors Apache version 1.3.3 Web server Sendmail version 8.9.1 e-mail server BIND version 4.9.7 name server Perl version 5.004 GNU C Compiler (GCC) version 2.7.2

Great for research OR BASIC MAIL  WEB DNS SERVER  NO PHP MYSQL 

The RaQ2 is a one-rack-unit tall (one unit is about 1.75 inches), cobalt-blue, "pizza-box" shaped system. In an ISP's equipment room, it could easily be mistaken for a network router or remote access server. Even at this size, the machine has 3.5-inch internal IDE/Ultra ATA hard drive -- a maximum of 16.8 GB storage currently -- and 256 MB of RAM. It runs a custom RISC processor based on the MIPS R4000 core at 250 MHz, and would probably be comparable to the speed of a 350 MHz Pentium II. It can also support external SCSI storage devices, and it now has two dual-mode 10/100 Mbps Ethernet ports. It also includes a serial port in case you want to connect it to a console terminal.

What's a Cobalt server?

Back around 1997, Cobalt Networks started bringing out a new line of low-cost server appliances.  These were MIPS-based machines, running RM5230 CPUs at 150MHz (manufactured by Quantum Effect Design).  By default, they came with 16MB RAM, and a massive 10GB IDE HDD (big for its day).  Their original servers came in two models, a 1U rackmounted server, the RaQ, and their bookshelf model, the Qube.

The original: Qube 2700 and RaQ 2700.

The Qube 2700, was a smallish box, roughly a 20cm cube.  Its hardware consisted of:

• QED RM5230 150MHz CPU (MIPS 4 Instruction Set Architecture, Little Endian)
• One internal IDE HDD
  
• One PCI slot
• VIA System Chipset
• Galileo PCI Chipset
  
• Two slots for 72-pin EDO RAM (maximum, 256MB)
• One 10Mbps Ethernet interface (Tulip chipset)

The RaQ had similar specifications, but also included a serial port.

Both Qube and RaQ, ran a Linux distribution based on Red Hat 5.x, with Linux kernel 2.0.  On top of this, it ran various services for file sharing, mail services, web server duties, and routing tasks.  It was controlled via a web-based interface.

To set them up, one simply powered the unit up, then set the IP address using the control panel.  This control panel consisted of a 2-line LCD screen, 4 arrow buttons, a Select button and an Enter button.  There was also a password-reset button, which was pressed using a pen (or similar implement).  The panel was located on the front of RaQ systems, and at the rear on Qube systems.

Restoring the Operating System

If your machine didn't come with an OS or the person who sold it to you has a lot of crap on it or it just doesn't boot up or anything, you'll have to restore the OS from the restore CD. It's actually easier than it sounds given that the Qube doesn't actually have a CD-ROM drive :)

Since this thing is worthless without a network, and a network is useless with only one machine on it, I'll assume that you have another computer handy. Make sure that your network card is supported (pretty much anything made by 3Com and a few others -- I'll post those later), and then re-start that machine and boot from the restore CD. When it finishes booting up, you'll be asked to read and agree to the license agreement. Whatever. After that, you get some more instructions and you can't quit the program that shows you the instructions. What they don't tell you is that you don't have to do anything else with that machine. Go over to your Qube and netboot it.

If you're interested, you can watch the install process from either the LCD screen, which shows one message of progress every once in a while. Alternatively, you can watch it happen over the console via the serial interface. It's actually all automatic from there on out. Just let the Qube load its OS and  relax.

When the installation is done, you can reboot the netboot host back into whatever operating system it usually runs -- you don't need it anymore. The Qube will say "Please turn off the power" when it's done loading the Cobalt Linux that it usually runs. Go ahead and shut off the machine and turn it back on whenever you are ready to play with it some more.

After OS installation

One of the cool things about this net appliance is that once the OS is on it, you pretty much never have to play with it on a command-line level. Just visit http://your.qube.host/ and it will walk you through the setup process for your network, etc. If you have a DHCP server on your network, it will automatically obtain an IP address, too.

If you  have to do the OS Restore  this iswhat you will need or you can Order Preeloaded Hard Drive  from RAQport.com Virginia Company

===========================
Minimum System Requirements
===========================

Intel-Compatible PC Desktop or Laptop: 
Computer Must Have an IDE (ATAPI) CD-ROM Drive and Must Be CD-ROM Bootable
Computer Must Have Only One of the Following Network Interface Cards:
        PCI Cards:
                Intel PRO/100+ Server Adapter (PILA8470B)
                Linksys EtherFast 10/100 LAN Card (LNE100TX)
                Netgear Fast Ethernet PCI Adapter (FA312TX)
                3Com OfficeConnect Fast Ethernet NIC (3CSOHO100-TX)
                3Com Fast EtherLink XL PCI NIC (3C905B-TX)
        PCMCIA Cards:
                Netgear Fast Ethernet PCMCIA Adapter (FA410TX)
                3Com Megahertz 10/100 LAN PC Card (3CCFE574BT)
                Xircom CreditCard Ethernet 10/100 (CE3B-100BTX)

If you don't have a network card from this list, you cannot proceed.  I guess the designers of the CD-ROM only had these cards in mind.  You can get some of these network cards for about $20 or less.  I have the 3Com Fast EtherLink XL PCI NIC (3C905B-TX) and it worked fine.  I tried the Netgear Fast Ethernet PCI Adapter (FA312TX), but for some reason, it didn't work for me.  Weird.

Either One 100Base-T Ethernet Hub and Two Standard Category 5 Cables, or One Category 5 Crossover Cable Hub or Switch must be 100 Mbit.

Or  You can run the OS  on the Microsoft Virtual PC  and you will need to have any special NIC card  just cross over cable and boot the server from the NET

QUESTIONS CALL OR EMAIL: RAQport Inc.
2004 North Monroe Street
Arlington Virginia 22207
Washington DC Area
USA
TEL: 703-528-0114
TEL2: 703-652-0993
FAX: 703-940-8300
sms: 703-485-6619
Toll Free:1800-695-6200
EMAIL: sales@raqport.com
WEB SITE: http://raqport.com
Replacement  for the SUN COBALT RAQ LINE
New Centos BluQuartz Virtualization and Cluster Web Servers

Cobalt
RaQ 2

The Cobalt RaQ 2 was the second in a line of Cobalt rack mounted servers. Running on a MIPS RM 5231 250 MHz cpu it could serve up web pages, mail, and act as an ftp server all from a 1U form factor.

What makes the Cobalt servers interesting is that they were stand alone units that had no provision for keyboards or monitors. Configuration was done through a web browser with initial setup being done through the front LCD and keypad. It ran a modified version of RedHat Linux though in recent years folks have been able to modify different versions of Linux to run on this server. Of note though is that you will loose the graphical web interface if you remove the original Cobalt software. As of 2008 however you can still download ISO files of Cobalt installation disks from the Sun ftp site.

Although there is enough room inside the RaQ 2 for dual hard drives it has been reported that the power supply isn't up to the additional load so I would not recommend it. Also of note are the two 72 pin simm slots at the top right corner of the motherboard. I have run double sided 128 MB simms as well as 64 MB single sided simms. Double sided 64 MB simms do not work with this server.

My RaQ 2 is the stripped down version with a single ethernet plug and no SCSI plug but it still functions just fine with a few odd quirks. On the far left is the power supply which connects to the motherboard with a since connector. Up in the front left corner is the power cable for the hard drive and on the lower right is the ribbon connector for the faceplate. There is a single fan on this motherboard though there is a covered grill in the power supply area for a second fan.

Since there is no CD drive or monitor the OS has to be loaded from another computer on the network. I downloaded the disk images from the Sun website, burned it to a CD and run it from my laptop.

Some important notes, make sure you download the English version for the RaQ 2 and not the Japanese!

Make sure you download the version specific to the RaQ 2 as any other version of the restore software will not work!

Using the Cobalt installation CD I have discovered that the largest hard drive supported is only 4.6GB anything larger and the installation process fails. I have looked around the web and have found references to modifying the code on the CD but this is beyond my abilities.

When you reload the software from the CD it will erase everything on your hard drive and reinstall a brand new version of the software! So need to backup your drive first! Once you are ready to go reboot your installation PC with the CD and follow the directions on screen. If you are going through a hub make sure your router is turned off as it could cause installation problems.

Next boot up your Cobalt while holding down the left and right arrow keys until you see 'metwork booting' on the LCD display. The LCD on the Cobalt will indicate the various stages of the installation process and will if needed reformat the drive. As mentioned above I have had problems installing drives 10 GB and larger and the smallest drive I have is the 4.3 which is also the size of the drive it came with.

The loading process will run through several stages and takes a little while to complete, if it installs properly the LCD will ask you to power down the server from the switch on the back.

Once you reboot the RaQ it will check the network and if it is assigned an IP address from a DHCP server it will display it on the LCD. If it does not find one you will be asked to enter an IP address for the RaQ. Once this is done the rest of the configuration is done through a web browser pointed to this IP address.

Shutting down the RaQ is a bit tricky as it must be done from the server console by pressing the S button and cycling through the commands until you find the Select: Power Down screen.

In order to complete the process select yes to fully shut down the RaQ.

My RaQ 2 does not have the dual Network ports or SCSI port that some RaQ 2's shipped with. The biggest challenge is the limitation with hard drive size which makes this an interesting computer but a bit limited if you wanted to serve up a large website. Still if you are a collector of computer hardware this makes an interesting addition to your collection.