Kallisti

What's in a name?

"kallisti" (καλλίστη actually) is the legendary inscription on the Golden Apple of Discord. What better name for an Apple server machine located in a Discordian themed data center?

Is it really a server?

This remains to be seen. There is nothing equivalent to IPMI over LAN on it. No network attached console or power controls. First attempts at Wake on LAN failed, too. But we'll see what happens as it's being built.

Whatever for?

Well, it's one more architecture (powerpc) to run Debian on at home. It actually still has a pretty decent hardware complement (which is to say that it can handle more workload than my phone, a Samsung Galaxy S III.)

Hardware

Chassis

Apple Xserve G5 s/n QP5260YBSLZ.

Management

There is no network attached management for this machine.

Processor(s)

2 socket system board. Populated with 2 IBM PowerPC 970FX CPUs with 2.3GHz clocks.

Memory

8x 1Gibyte PC4200 ECC DDR DIMMs for 8Gibytes of RAM

Mass Storage

3 Apple Drive Modules. These are Apple proprietary hotplug drive sleds. Based on random internet readings, it may be that these connections support SATA 1.0 (1.5Gbits/sec) data rates only and that drives must not attemtp to negotiate a SATA 2.0 (3.0Gbits/sec) connection to the controller.

This machine also has a 4-port Qlogic based PCI-X FibreChannel HBA in the lower slot. Not known yet whether this is a 1Gbits/sec, 2Gbits/sec, or 4Gbits/sec adapter. (Most likely 2Gbits/sec, based it its age.)

Network

2 gigabit Ethernet connections. I believe these are Broadcom based, so expect the usual firmware rigamarole to get these working.

Manufacturer Support Info

Search apple.com for "xserve G5".

Operating System

Debian 7.current will be installed by over the network.

Applications

Applications are for users. We don't have any of those. But, this machine may be a good choice to run the Hercules IBM Mainframe emulator. The mainframe would certainly feel more comfortable, since it's running on an IBM CPU.

Resources

Google. Google. Google.
And the Debian PowerPC related pages, too.