ALR Quad6 board with processors

[4Run4Fun]

This may not excatly qualify as vintage, but I have a working ALR Quad6 Mother board with 4 Pentium Pro processors installed. I also have a SIMM card containing 64MB of tested RAM.

If you are not familiar with these items, they were manufactured in the mid 1990s by Advanced Logic Research and for a while held the record as the fastest commerical servers money could buy.

Its 4-way SMP, and that has a coolness factor thats hard to match. The CPUs are Pentium Pro 200/256K all stepping codes match. The RAM is 60ns Fast Page with Parity. I will add some pictures in the next day or so.

Warning - this board is big, and non-standard. I have seen people custom fit them in exceptionally large tower cases, but it will take the biggest one you can find -trust me!

I have all the drivers and utilites to go with it.

If anyone is interested, I will happily entertain all offers. These items are tested and they DO WORK FINE.

Thanks,

Ryan

[Unknown_K]

Does this board do 6 CPU's also with a plug in card?

[NeXT]

You got a photograph of this?
if I can easily mod in an AT or ATX power supply I'm actually rather tempted.

EDIT: Wait, This is it, correct?

[4Run4Fun]

Does this board do 6 CPU's also with a plug in card?

No, I'm sorry this is the Revolution Quad6 board, the one you are referring to is the the Revolution 6x6.

[4Run4Fun]

You got a photograph of this?
if I can easily mod in an AT or ATX power supply I'm actually rather tempted.

EDIT: Wait, This is it, correct?

I tried your embeded link, but it didn't work. I will have a photo posted of both the board and the card w/memory very soon. I found an image on the internet and have attached it.

[4Run4Fun]

Here are the photos everyone wanted to see. I forgot to mention that I have two (2) memory risers that go with the board, and if you buy it, you can have them both. I know the photos are not that large, but thats the maximum allowable upload size. If you need to see them larger, I can email the pics directly to you.

I wanted to also mention that other than hacking a power supply to operate this board ( which a pinout doagram can easily be found online ), it is otherwise VERY compatible with regular hardware. It accepts PS2 mouse and keyboard, standard PCI and ISA cards, and I successfully installed WIndows 2000 Advanced Server on the first try with all processors recognized and functioning. I would, however recommend an aftermarket IDE and floppy controller as the onboard ones are painfully slow.

If you are willing to spend the money, I can put you in touch with a company that still sells the original cases that house these beasts, complete with redundant, load-sharing power supplies, 13 drive bays, a touch screen LCD panel, something to the tune of 12 fans, and more.

If you were to see the board operating, you'd be impressed. It has 4 activity LEDs on the motherboard - one for each processor, they dance a pretty light show!

[Anonymous Freak]

Too bad the "Pentium II Overdrive" doesn't work in more-than-two socket systems. I have a box of 'em, and I'd love to throw them in this beasty. (The Pentium II Overdrive was a 333 MHz Pentium II processor with full-speed L2 cache crammed into the Pentium Pro's Socket 8. So it was basically a Pentium Pro at 66% faster clock speed than the fastest released 'true' PPro, plus MMX. The mainstream Pentium II processors used a half-speed L2 cache.)

edit: Ah, taking a look at the pictures, it needs the old-style plug-in VRMs. I don't have any of those lying around, so this board wouldn't do me a lot of good. (Not to mention the lack of proper chassis.)

[4Run4Fun]

There are several threads around the internet of folks successfully operating the 'Overdrive' CPUs in both this machine and the 6x6, so I believe you might be in luck on that one. The BIOS allows a lot of multiplier modification and customization. As far as the VRMs, you are right, they are required, but when I bought a set last time on Ebay, they were less than $6 a piece and have worked flawlessly for about 6 years now. Low demand has led to people basically giving them away.

Surely someone out there would enjoy a SETI or FOLDING machine of this uniqueness!

VRMs for $6

Article where PPro Overdrives work in this system (read the last paragragh)

[4Run4Fun]

One more thought though. Even if you're not interested in this board setup, I would love to try the Overdrives myself in my other Quad6 system as I have read they work beautifully. Do you have a set of 4 with stepping codes matching?

Thanks,

Ryan

[Unknown_K]

I have 2 PPro 333 overdrives on an Intel PR440FX with 1GB EDO ECC ram running for a decade 24/7, very reliable hardware.

If you are going to run the real PPro try to get the black ones with 1MB cache.