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Booting my “New” Cobalt Qube 3 - part one

January 5th, 2008

Since I’ve seen the Fit-PC, I have wanted a second computer to just act as a web server. Of course, I am cheap, so it was not the fit-pc.

It was a Cobalt Qube 3. A nice little box that went for thousands back in the day, and a 60mm fan that was far to noisy (replaced). A friend had it lying around, passed to him by another friend. Who had removed the hard drives.

**** [No, those are just asterisks, but whatever floats your boat].

So, according to my research, the thing originally ran a variation of RedHat 6.4 - which could be installed from a boot cd on a different computer.

Requirements

† Remember, this thing was made for Y2K. When WinXP was new. Mostly, this means the network card in the old pc must be considered. The most common card I know of - which worked for me - is the 3Com 3C905-TX - pictured here.

My Qube, the “Professional” version, was set up to automatically have a RAID0 or RAID1 configuration, depending on which hard drives it finds.. With my single drive, set as “master no slave”, connected to the front IDE slot, I have a RAID0 - I don’t know what a second drive of any capacity would do.

Another note while I’m inside the box; The processor looks like it is on an expansion card, which looks like it is an attempt at PCI Express. Before any standard for PCI Express. Nevermind.

~

Both boxes should be off.

Using the Crossover patch cable, connect the old PC to the Qube’s first Ethernet port (that would be the roman numeral “I”).

Boot the old computer from the cd burned above. If its successful, you’ll get a software agreement. Page through, confirm with “y”, and let it sit.

On the Qube, hold down the “Snter” button (marked with a white dot in a circle), and power up. In a few seconds, you should get a “CMOS cleared” message. Power down.

Now, hold down the “Select” button (”next track” in a white circle) and power up. Up will come a little “Select Option” prompt (you can let go of the select button now): using the arrow keys to navigate & the enter button to confirm, select “Boot from net”.

The next bit os taken from Upgrading your Qube3 to a RAQ550, as I don’t want to re-type it.

After the loading kernel message, the Qube will ask ERASE AND REBUILD? answer Y

The Qube will report: NEED ROM 2.9.34 OR BETTER, and, SELECT HARDWARE. Make very sure to choose QUBE3 on the hardware display. Next, the Qube will suggest SELECT VERSION 2.9.34. Acknowledge this version.

Before the flash process starts, the Qube will display one more time;
2.9.34 (y/n), answer with Y

Next, you will see ERASING ROM, and, FLASHING ROM

After the flash process completes, you will see the message: FLASH SUCCESS - Please reboot.

Turn the Qube off and back on, and restart the OS restore process. The Qube will again prompt you with: ERASE AND REBUILD?. Acknowledge with Y one more time, and the restore process will start.

Let the restore process run. After around half an hour it will be complete.

Now, the OS restore processs SHOULD instruct you to power off or reboot the machine. If this is the case, all is well and you are done.

Personally, my Qube was stuck on the “Shutting down System” message for a while. I let it sit for a few minutes in that state, then hit the power button.

Disconnect the crossover cable, and connect the Qube to your network with the same port (yes, I forgot this part the first time).

On first boot, you will be prompted for Network connection information. If you are your own system administrator, I leave that to you. If not, get them now: your Qube expects a static IP address to work properly.

On successful boot, the display end at shoing the configured IP address. Visit that page in your browser - http://192.168.0.96/, for example - and finish your configuring. Nothe the picture is shows in not your Qube; it is the RaQ550, the last update in that line of servers.

Enjoy your Qube.

-Sud.

PS: The RaQ550 setup has SSH enabled by default.

PPS: I’ll probably be converting it to Gentoo box soon now that I know it works

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