My dad received this from someone who I believe worked at Intel (but I'm not certain as that was probably around 18 years ago). I think it had a command-line only version of Linux on it (I'm not sure though) but I had no experience with Linux at the time so I didn't bother with that and just wiped it. I tried an installation of Windows 95 OSR 2 on it around the time as it has too little RAM (16 MB) to run Windows 2000 (I didn't have Windows NT) and that was very slow because of the limited amount of RAM and I think the video was also very slow. (It had a 2 GB IBM Deskstar drive in it that has since died.) Since then it has just been sitting at my dad's house as I have no use for it (though I do think it's cool), and my thoughts are that maybe I should check to see if there's anyone nearby who'd like to tinker with it. If not it can either go to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, or up to his new house in Yreka, CA (which would also mean that if you're not far from there you could pick it up from there). If you do want it I'd prefer that you do not make permanent modifications to it so that it can eventually be donated to the Computer History Museum whenever you or any future owners decide to not keep it anymore.
If anyone's nearby and you'd like to ask me many questions privately then I'd prefer that you go to my profile to download my vCard so you can contact me via e-mail as I am currently limited to a total of 9 sent and received private messages as I have not yet posted enough times to lift that restriction.
I'm not sure what video card it had in it when we got it but I have several ISA VGA cards that you could choose from if you want. (Most have a Tseng Labs ET4000 chip with 1 MB RAM, but one of those only has 512 KB. I also have a card with a Trident TVGA8900 chip and 1 MB RAM (though this card isn't stable in this server with the monitor I'm using - it often has glitches with the character output after a few seconds to a couple minutes, and occasionally the video locks up but the server keeps running), and a card with an Oak Technology OTi067 chip and 512 KB RAM.) All 3 of the 1 MB Tseng Labs cards do not have a mounting bracket so if you want a 1 MB Tseng Labs card with a mounting bracket either you'd probably have to add RAM to the 512 KB card or find/make a bracket for one of the 1 MB cards. (If I still have any of the mounting brackets then I don't know where they are.)
It came with a SIIG CI-1050 (stason.org jumper settings) Enhanced IDE controller card which is really nice as it has its own BIOS and auto-detects IDE hard drives (with a capacity of up to 137 GB or 128 GiB). (The BIOS on the Intel motherboard does not have an IDE auto-detect feature, and you can't even use custom drive settings - so you'd be stuck with the few dozen drive settings that it has built into it [and some of the 47 standard ones are blanked out for some reason] unless you use a SCSI drive.) It also came with a Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum 16 sound card and a SCSI CD-ROM drive, but I can't find the card right now and the CD-ROM drive didn't work at all when I plugged it in to a power supply to test it a month ago. (Though if it needs to be connected to a SCSI card to work then that could explain this issue as I didn't do that as I have a banker's box full of old optical drives [most are CD-ROM drives and there are a few CD burners] that I wanted to test and that'd take too long.) I could throw in an optical drive of your choice if you want, but I do find it handy to leave a drive bay open as that provides a good place in the front to lift it from (only while the sheet metal cover over the drives is installed as that is needed to provide support on both sides of the drive trays) as it weighs exactly 75 pounds while it's fully assembled. (The dolly in the photos is not included but you can get one from Harbor Freight, and it's very helpful for moving the server around.)
I did a Google search recently and found this post on cpu-world.com from someone who listed an "Intel 486 memory card 486ATMEM8 PBA458144-004 w/ early Intel Logo" (which is the exactly the same as one of the RAM cards that this server has installed, so it would add 8 MB of RAM to the system for a total of 24 MB) for sale for $30 in 2008. They didn't update their posting to indicate that it had been sold so there's a chance that they may still have it. However, it's not displayed on their Flickr photostream at present.
One thing I spent some time on is looking at the date codes on various components (if you're not familiar, its in the form of 4 numbers in a row [if it's more numbers than that then it's not a date, but it can have letters after and/or before the date] with the first 2 digits being the last 2 digits of the year, and the last 2 digits are the week of the year - e.g., 0646 is the 46th week of 2006. On rare occasions the week and year are swapped so it's best to look at many components to get an idea of when something was manufactured). I could tell you what I found out but thought that it'd be more fun for those of you who like to discover things like this yourself to have a look and see what you come up with. The first place I looked was on the real-time clock and non-volatile SRAM chips, but I later found out that those chips don't tell the whole story. The case has the date of December 1990 molded on an area of the stands that is not visible while they are installed on the case. So the other things to determine are when the motherboard was made, when the CPU daughterboard was made, when the RAM cards were made, when the power supply was made, and when the power distribution PCB (for the drives) was made.
The second opening from the bottom is for the power switch. And we didn't receive the key for the keylock. It's not locked though. And the plastic could benefit from some retrobriting if you feel like it. (Google "retrobrite" if you don't know what it is.)
The label on the back had been removed before we received it.
A Dell OptiPlex 780 small form factor (Mini-ITX) PC is to the right.
Showing the cover over the motherboard as well as the cover over the drive bays and power supply.
PBA 458957-010 B486AT25.
Showing the CPU daughterboard (plugged into the motherboard) and the CPU module card (plugged into the daughterboard). I have no idea what the correct terms are so I'm just guessing. The CPUs and L2 cache chips are covered by 2 heatsinks in total. You can see that the motherboard has power connectors for a second power supply (upper right) as well as a second set of headers (lower left) for the power LED (pins 1 & 2 of 3), reset switch, speaker, and keylock (labeled FRTPNL).
You can see the labels for the power connectors as well as the fact that the power connectors were melted a bit by a hot air gun that had been used on the chip next to the power connectors, possibly to melt the solder so they could attach that wire. You can also see that one keyway on the lower power connector is open, and that corresponds with the one key that is on the correct power supply connector for that motherboard power connector.
SBC486AT.
486ATMEM8 / PBA 458144-004 (upper card) and PBA 507567-100 / P486ATMEM8 (lower card). I've never taken these cards out before taking this picture and I discovered that it's not a good idea to just grab the card with your hands and pull as when it comes loose it shoots out towards you and things can get damaged. Fortunately the only damage was a slight bend (about 7-8mm) at the bottom of the mounting bracket which was easy to straighten out. For the second card I used a technique which also works well with long and/or tight-fitting cards of any sort (such as VLB cards) which is to put your fingers from one hand against the lower edge of the end of the card (there's a black arrow to show this) and press your thumb against something sturdy on the motherboard (blue arrow). And with the other hand I put my index finger against the top of the mounting bracket (other black arrow) and pressed against that (though this may not be ideal if you have a case that either has sharp edges or makes it difficult to use your finger to press against the top of the bracket) while also moving the card a bit from side to side (towards and away from the chip side of the board rather than just prying out either the front or back edge so that it comes out of the slot at an angle along the length of the card as that causes minor damage to the contacts and mating edge of the card that can be seen with a magnifying glass or maybe just by looking close with you eyes if you have good vision) in order to reduce the amount of static friction. Since your fingers have a much shorter range of travel than your arms do that makes it much less likely for the card to go flying when it comes loose. Also, I used a white plastic eraser (probably a Magic Rub one but it's so old that it doesn't have any printing on it) to clean the gold contacts before taking these photos. (Pink erasers also work but they leave tiny scratches in the gold that white plastic erasers do not leave, and if you value something you might as well treat it well.)
If anyone's nearby and you'd like to ask me many questions privately then I'd prefer that you go to my profile to download my vCard so you can contact me via e-mail as I am currently limited to a total of 9 sent and received private messages as I have not yet posted enough times to lift that restriction.
I'm not sure what video card it had in it when we got it but I have several ISA VGA cards that you could choose from if you want. (Most have a Tseng Labs ET4000 chip with 1 MB RAM, but one of those only has 512 KB. I also have a card with a Trident TVGA8900 chip and 1 MB RAM (though this card isn't stable in this server with the monitor I'm using - it often has glitches with the character output after a few seconds to a couple minutes, and occasionally the video locks up but the server keeps running), and a card with an Oak Technology OTi067 chip and 512 KB RAM.) All 3 of the 1 MB Tseng Labs cards do not have a mounting bracket so if you want a 1 MB Tseng Labs card with a mounting bracket either you'd probably have to add RAM to the 512 KB card or find/make a bracket for one of the 1 MB cards. (If I still have any of the mounting brackets then I don't know where they are.)
It came with a SIIG CI-1050 (stason.org jumper settings) Enhanced IDE controller card which is really nice as it has its own BIOS and auto-detects IDE hard drives (with a capacity of up to 137 GB or 128 GiB). (The BIOS on the Intel motherboard does not have an IDE auto-detect feature, and you can't even use custom drive settings - so you'd be stuck with the few dozen drive settings that it has built into it [and some of the 47 standard ones are blanked out for some reason] unless you use a SCSI drive.) It also came with a Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum 16 sound card and a SCSI CD-ROM drive, but I can't find the card right now and the CD-ROM drive didn't work at all when I plugged it in to a power supply to test it a month ago. (Though if it needs to be connected to a SCSI card to work then that could explain this issue as I didn't do that as I have a banker's box full of old optical drives [most are CD-ROM drives and there are a few CD burners] that I wanted to test and that'd take too long.) I could throw in an optical drive of your choice if you want, but I do find it handy to leave a drive bay open as that provides a good place in the front to lift it from (only while the sheet metal cover over the drives is installed as that is needed to provide support on both sides of the drive trays) as it weighs exactly 75 pounds while it's fully assembled. (The dolly in the photos is not included but you can get one from Harbor Freight, and it's very helpful for moving the server around.)
I did a Google search recently and found this post on cpu-world.com from someone who listed an "Intel 486 memory card 486ATMEM8 PBA458144-004 w/ early Intel Logo" (which is the exactly the same as one of the RAM cards that this server has installed, so it would add 8 MB of RAM to the system for a total of 24 MB) for sale for $30 in 2008. They didn't update their posting to indicate that it had been sold so there's a chance that they may still have it. However, it's not displayed on their Flickr photostream at present.
One thing I spent some time on is looking at the date codes on various components (if you're not familiar, its in the form of 4 numbers in a row [if it's more numbers than that then it's not a date, but it can have letters after and/or before the date] with the first 2 digits being the last 2 digits of the year, and the last 2 digits are the week of the year - e.g., 0646 is the 46th week of 2006. On rare occasions the week and year are swapped so it's best to look at many components to get an idea of when something was manufactured). I could tell you what I found out but thought that it'd be more fun for those of you who like to discover things like this yourself to have a look and see what you come up with. The first place I looked was on the real-time clock and non-volatile SRAM chips, but I later found out that those chips don't tell the whole story. The case has the date of December 1990 molded on an area of the stands that is not visible while they are installed on the case. So the other things to determine are when the motherboard was made, when the CPU daughterboard was made, when the RAM cards were made, when the power supply was made, and when the power distribution PCB (for the drives) was made.
The second opening from the bottom is for the power switch. And we didn't receive the key for the keylock. It's not locked though. And the plastic could benefit from some retrobriting if you feel like it. (Google "retrobrite" if you don't know what it is.)
The label on the back had been removed before we received it.
A Dell OptiPlex 780 small form factor (Mini-ITX) PC is to the right.
Showing the cover over the motherboard as well as the cover over the drive bays and power supply.
PBA 458957-010 B486AT25.
Showing the CPU daughterboard (plugged into the motherboard) and the CPU module card (plugged into the daughterboard). I have no idea what the correct terms are so I'm just guessing. The CPUs and L2 cache chips are covered by 2 heatsinks in total. You can see that the motherboard has power connectors for a second power supply (upper right) as well as a second set of headers (lower left) for the power LED (pins 1 & 2 of 3), reset switch, speaker, and keylock (labeled FRTPNL).
You can see the labels for the power connectors as well as the fact that the power connectors were melted a bit by a hot air gun that had been used on the chip next to the power connectors, possibly to melt the solder so they could attach that wire. You can also see that one keyway on the lower power connector is open, and that corresponds with the one key that is on the correct power supply connector for that motherboard power connector.
SBC486AT.
486ATMEM8 / PBA 458144-004 (upper card) and PBA 507567-100 / P486ATMEM8 (lower card). I've never taken these cards out before taking this picture and I discovered that it's not a good idea to just grab the card with your hands and pull as when it comes loose it shoots out towards you and things can get damaged. Fortunately the only damage was a slight bend (about 7-8mm) at the bottom of the mounting bracket which was easy to straighten out. For the second card I used a technique which also works well with long and/or tight-fitting cards of any sort (such as VLB cards) which is to put your fingers from one hand against the lower edge of the end of the card (there's a black arrow to show this) and press your thumb against something sturdy on the motherboard (blue arrow). And with the other hand I put my index finger against the top of the mounting bracket (other black arrow) and pressed against that (though this may not be ideal if you have a case that either has sharp edges or makes it difficult to use your finger to press against the top of the bracket) while also moving the card a bit from side to side (towards and away from the chip side of the board rather than just prying out either the front or back edge so that it comes out of the slot at an angle along the length of the card as that causes minor damage to the contacts and mating edge of the card that can be seen with a magnifying glass or maybe just by looking close with you eyes if you have good vision) in order to reduce the amount of static friction. Since your fingers have a much shorter range of travel than your arms do that makes it much less likely for the card to go flying when it comes loose. Also, I used a white plastic eraser (probably a Magic Rub one but it's so old that it doesn't have any printing on it) to clean the gold contacts before taking these photos. (Pink erasers also work but they leave tiny scratches in the gold that white plastic erasers do not leave, and if you value something you might as well treat it well.)