Free Apple Xserve Servers From A School Bin!

[@psivewri]

Try MyHeritage today! bit.ly/PSIVEWRI Use promo code: PSIVEWRI for free shipping :)

[@JibplayzYT]

been watching for a long time. nice to see youre still going bro!

[@gideondark]

I bought the kit and created a MyHeritage site. I hope that this helps to support your wonderful channel!

[@nR-kv7xo]

lmao that segue was smooth

[@ColaTai]

Dont carreeeee but get that bag

[@note8dummydummy-bg9vb]

try a diffrent graphics card

[@CaelThunderwing]

Everytime i see that battery brand i cant NOT think of dankpods screamin out "ohh my PKCELL!"

[@iitzfizz]

NUGGETS!

[@emdotrod]

I think PKCELL is pretty popular in Australia

[@marshmallow_larissa]

Same!

[@MetaliX86]

YESSS SAME

[@redacted_vrvr]

finally someone who understands

[@asetatlikalem]

6:28 DANKPODS REFERENCE

[@SGvagon]

Oh my PKCELL 😂 ! Roll out from the table :-D .

[@omagalifty]

pookcell ✓

[@TheSpotify95]

Pkcell!

[@CDM14y]

dank.

[@BeersAndBeatsPDX]

Not really a reference. It's just a battery that he used.

[@harryroesser2763]

Holy cow it is a pkcell

[@Viligantfrog652]

I will forever pronounce that "puk-cell"

[@harryroesser2763]

194 likes in a single day WTH

[@Cool-Computer]

golf ball

[@harryroesser2763]

@@Cool-Computer yes

[@harryroesser2763]

I go for 3 months and I see this. Wow

[@Odd-Bike]

6:27 what a little nugget of a battery. DankPods will be proud

[@crazyfurnaceguy1229]

12:12 Maybe this COM port can connect to terminal (can use COM port to USB adapter with software terminal) to check the server states or control🤔

[@psivewri]

That's a very good point, I had no idea that was possible!

[@mja00]

​@@psivewri I've got two of these machines, although they're much newer ones that run Xeons. The serial port is a pretty basic standard, it's just a basic 9 pin that runs at 57.6 KB/s using 8 data bits with no parity. Sadly I've been unable to find documentation on what exactly can be done with the port. Both of my machines boot and I run the latest version of macOSX that supports them. You'll definitely need to either source a new or repair the PSU before anything can be done. It'll also be a pain to load an OS on it (if the drives are dead/don't have one) due to the firewire ports. I was lucky and mine has standard USB ports on it. I've not got a ton of knowledge on these systems but I'm happy to answer questions where I can.

[@antikommunistischaktion]

"Oh my PKCELL"

[@uiopuiop3472]

yeea pkcell supremacy

[@banditutexr6styleslide]

I used to repair one of these and when my IT office closed, I took one of these with me and its in my room being a drive backup machine where I store all my importent data on it and move it to retro and old computers that can use a SSD. Aleast its not in a trash bin.

[@tommythetoe]

Well nothing will happen with your 12 volt rail down yes. Why not get a diagram that shows the voltages coming out of that power supply. You can unsolder the plug and connect it to a regular power supply. Can't hurt to try as long as you get the voltages hooked up right.

[@kir0nz]

Better to find the short first. Otherwise he risks damaging another power supply.

[@adidusi]

Dude remembered he had a KZbin channel

[@emperorarasaka]

Dude found his KZbin channel at Goodwill and decided to bring it back up online

[@lefteris.adamou.1]

come on now! it wasn't a long time ago he posted a video in here

[@adampeprnik]

@adidusi Dude was building his new house so he could get back to making KZbin videos, so your comment is pretty pointless. Dude.

[@rnnto]

​@@adampeprnikever heard of a joke?

[@Nunya58294]

​@@rnntoYou ever hear of not being stupid? Try it sometime.

[@budgerigarer]

6:25 Obligatory "Oh my PKCELL!"

[@lordquenzo5636]

12:03 this table is something else 😂😂

[@declanmcquay3476]

I remember admining Xserves from the G4 to Intel eras with a 2TB XRAID connected to it. Very reliable hardware, the only issue I had was the original G4 had an IBM Deathstar HDD in it.

[@corey7219]

6:25 "Oh my pkcell!"

[@johnDingoFoxVelocity]

Just a heads up the g4 xserve has a battery inside that controls the drive array when that battery dies the xserve no longer reads any disk ever again

[@4kleidisc]

@psivewri

[@psivewri]

Before it blew up it did seem to startup thankfully. I did also put a new PRAM battery in the G4 :)

[@stphinkle]

The RAID Battery is NOT the PRAM Battery. The Raid Battery is a bigger 3.6V square battery. You can still buy them if you search for them. It doesn't erase the disks if dead, but does disable the write cache leading to very slow and erratic response.

[@connormatthews9674]

PKCELL MENTIONED 🗣️

[@HK_808]

The bang sounded an x class rifa filter cap possibly. Ive dealt with them in plenty of vintage electronics

[@bouncypear_net]

That's more of an Apple II/III and 80s Mac thing. Most anything 90s and newer isn't going to have a paper filter cap.

[@kylehazachode]

I wish Xserve would make a comeback. Silent, low power, Apple silicone, rackable macOS based NAS; that’d be nice.

[@thorsteinj]

Rumour has it that Apple has racks upon racks with Mac Studios running their cloud based secure Apple Intelligence. It might be the stupidest use of rack space in history. Maybe you could get 2 units in 4U of rack space. Apple could probably throw 24 individual Apple Silicon machines/modules in 1U if they really wanted. Just think the iPad logic board on its side with a heatsink, then some fans in the back and a power supply. Perhaps 48 even if you stack the modules two deep in one rack case.

[@LouisSubearth]

​@thorsteinj maybe a Mac Studio board in a blade server format could prove to be useful.

[@thorsteinj]

@@LouisSubearth Maybe so but the form factor doesn’t make sense imho, same with the Mini’s board. Putting the Studio board in a more optimal chassis is still better than having the entire machine crammed into a rack. Also there would need to be some “external” things like some admin interface and network (both IP and potential SAN).

[@JoebDragon]

and pay apple prices for storage with no hot swap?

[@thorsteinj]

@@JoebDragon If this was ever to be made and sold it would be to business customers wanting to utilise the *potential* compute power of Apple silicon (if this is a thing). Storage would be over SAN to whatever storage system the customer needs (_definitely not_ sold by Apple). Each "compute module" would most likely have 128 GB of storage and if anything used to store a hypervisor and potential caching. But this is just layers upon layers of assumptions to what would _most likely_ never be a real product. But it would take up way less space than rack mounting piles of Mac Studios or whatever (which is reportedly what they're currently doing).

[@SoundToxin]

If you think water damage may be the cause you could try soaking the boards in white vinegar for a bit, then re-cleaning with isopropyl alcohol afterward. You could also check the caps with an ESR meter. You can have a bad cap that looks totally normal at a glance. It sucks when you get some cool free/cheap stuff but can't manage to fix it. Happens to me now and then. I hope you can figure something out and revisit these someday.

[@jeykey8394]

"OHHHH MY PKCELL"

[@georgeh6856]

I've never used Apple servers but I did do development many years ago on a different company's Unix servers. The Xserve looks like it has a serial port on the back. Hook that up to a TTY dumb terminal or to an older PC (or Mac) with a serial port and a serial terminal emulator program. See whether that will display any text screens to administer the server. Also, try to find manuals for the Xserve. Those would tell you how to set up and troubleshoot them.

[@Noah-Lach]

I know industrial design isn’t really important in a server but damn, was Apple’s design team on it. This thing looks beautiful today; it must have been downright futuristic 22 years ago.

[@johnDingoFoxVelocity]

As for your g5 if the battery failed already it wipes the drive controller as well and prevents the machine from booting in some cases you need to try the on board video to see out of the xserve external cards only work on the core 2 duo models

[@psivewri]

The G5 doesn't have any onboard video outputs though. Interesting to know about the drive controller though, perhaps there is still hope!

[@dev0xr1]

@@psivewri hopefully to be honest, id love to see these running

[@Rivenworld]

Great coffee table...

[@culturedivined]

i want one lol

[@frokfrdk]

Damn that battery is as old as I am. The front IO being bridged with a firewire cable was likely a cost saving trick by Apple considering the more niche nature of these products. They are cool relics of something Apple wouldn't make anymore (rack mounted Mac Pro doesn't count)

[@psivewri]

Glad your channel is doing so well! Best of luck in the future Mr. Frok

[@frokfrdk]

@@psivewri thank you Mr. psivewri

[@seafouronesea]

3:56 The identifier light serves both as an identifier *and* system warning light. You very likely have a damaged motherboard as in regular operation (such as when the MacRack1,1 initially booted) the light will turn off on it's own if no faults are detected 4:07 The loud fans are expected for rackmac (ppc) and xserve (intel). The fans will run at full power if no boot device is found. You should definitely look for the user manual for your ppc serves as that will give you a better indication of what the various debug lights inside the xserve are actually telling you. If you'd want some help with getting these running I'd be happy to try giving you advice as I have my own xserves I play around with for fun.

[@akosnagy387]

Hello! I had 1 of these and replaced the capacitors on the motherboard. And it still works today. And blow down the motherboard with glass cleaner and brush it well. This is what I did and it worked.

[@_BullsEyeBob]

I remember these beasts. My father (rip) used a whole bunch of these in his private computer consulting business after leaving Apple Inc back in the day. He was an Apple fan through and through.

[@vaibhavhayaran]

Oh the pkcell!!!!

[@jamesburke2759]

Actual diagnostic question: How long did you power them on for? ive had some servers take up to 20 mins to post. Server ram, especially apple server ram is very specific. are they original sticks or did some young it guy try and upgrade them before turfing them? did you try swapping the ram from each unit? also a long shot but are they looking for a boot drive? you could use the g4 with osx server and see what happens when you switch the drive. or try with a boot cd and see if it spins up when you hold c.

[@ICanDoThatToo2]

9:26 I love the square marked "RB4" so you know where Rubber Bumper #4 goes.

[@poundlandspeedwagonrequiem]

It's a shame you couldn't get them to work, but damn it does make a good table paired with those cheese greater macs lol

[@Flail_Snail]

I didn't expect the coffee table at the end. That's exactly how I dealt with my two cheese graters and (Intel-based) xserve til I got a server rack.

[@dezhocob]

I just watched every video you ever made after discovering you! Several afternoons well spent! Looking forward to new content! Cheers mate!

[@RAFAEL60160]

6:20 A PKCELL

[@agenttexx]

We had one of these at the newspaper I worked at. We used it in place of a PowerPC that died it was running print operations on a large imager. These print4ed newspaper size black and white negatives that we then ran through a film processor to burn onto plates for a web press. A local Mac retailer was trying to get us to buy a few more from him, but we had a larger retailer we dealt with.

[@thorsteinj]

Had one of those OG G4s and it's a space heater, honestly a 2010 Mac mini would probably run circles around it. Fans go full speed all the time, and it's mostly necessary. IDE drives with ... *finicky* caddies (shorted one of them, luckily only the caddy and not the backplane). And 10.5 Leopard was the last you could run on both these. Also had the last of those Intel Xserves which I upgraded with dual W5590s... and then I got a 8th gen ProLiant DL360 which is just _so much better_ in almost every way. Remote management, parts availability, online resources, etc. The intel Xserves had some pretty interesting and obscure IPMI stuff but otherwise their "in house" server management software was quite shiny and exactly what you'd expect from early 2000s Apple; shiny Aqua interface, lights and buttons all over. Very much tuned towards schools and other similar organisations (charities, churches etc.), for the in house techie to handle. No wonder Apple pulled the plug on these - but I'm secretly hoping they'll bring it back.

[@CraigRodmellMusic]

Good on you for showing when things don't turn out all right, as well as when they do.

[@snjert8406]

6:26 Ah, my pkcell...

[@dogtooth4143]

The chassis still looks quite magnificent, might be a cool project to pull out the guts and transform it into a apple silicon based Xserve

[@Lillia-nu2xt]

Your content vibe is just right, keep it up

[@ShiroKuroh]

Had 4 very similar to yours. They didn't do much very well. This wasn't apples last shot at servers. but they learned in time stay out of that market. I think they made the right choice. It was a good thing they did, but sadly didn't help them much.

[@blakerichardson414]

The company where I work had 8-9 of these, awesome machines and was I disappointed when Apple killed them off, they were incredibly well spec'd. When Apple dropped the Xserve it was the beginning of the end for Apple being in the enterprise server space.

[@GradythaStudips]

Those are the nicest looking G4 and G5's ever. i've never seen em so nice.

[@jublywubly]

I'd check the capacitors. A "pop" sound is often characteristic of a capacitor exploding. It's not always obvious, though. I had a VHS video player that made a "pop" sound. Then it made "pop-pop-pop..." sounds. It turned out a capacitor literally blew its top off and it was bouncing around the circuit board. That was pretty obvious what was wrong, but I've heard of other cases where the capacitors had to be checked, to find which one had popped.

[@123coven6]

I don't know how a multimeter works but you may have tested the battery wrong. I watched another video and you need to put the black probe on the same row of pins as where you put reb probe in the video. 11:40

[@exboisv]

I had one of these for my school. Worked great for years.

[@YoshiKartt]

Great video! My friend found one of these in a school bin before.

[@funkyjammaclips]

I use to work with these back in the day, you need a mac computer connected to them running the server version of the os in order to access it. You don't get video out from the server itself.

[@komidanohitouko]

ohhh my PKCELL

[@johnvanwinkle4351]

If you could replace/or repair the power supply might solve the issue. I enjoyed the video and I was not aware Apple made these types of servers.

[@gebenjohnrivera8871]

At least you tried to fixed 😅 glad to see your uploads again ❤

[@MacCrafter707]

I had a chance to get a couple of X Serves a few years ago and really wanted them but I didn't think I'd ever do anything with them because of their power requirements and that they do best in a rack system. Then I found that you could get small racks the size of a mini fridge and now I'm mad at myself for not having a home server.

[@Aduke95]

Good one. I got also from a school an Apple Xserve, the last model with intel Xeon CPU. Which is ... a normal server brand apple. Mine works perfectly. Actually not in use, upgrade to the maximum 48GB of RAM, just try for fun quickly virtualisation with ESXi 6.5 for fun : Slow but works. With that said, I still have original disks with MacOS Server, but without password, I can't go further.

[@TheKill3rShark1]

I never even knew that Apple made servers! Pretty cool

[@lukyphill]

Getting working firmware compatible HDD's is the hardest part. After repair or replacing the PSU you'll need to create boot media such as OS X (Snow Leopard) or FreeBSD to start the server.

[@flashmusicarchive]

OOH MY PKCELL

[@sudoertor2009]

If you can figure out the pinout you could probably improvise a flex power supply into the slot and power it that way. Sort of sketchy but if it looks stupid, but works, it ain't stupid.

[@petersziraki7672]

Maybe you can try buying a new PSU for one of them. I found many on eBay, some new ones cost only around 25 USD. :)

[@TheBasementChannel]

Great score! I picked up a dual G5 version for free a while back. Nice to get the drives with yours, they’re hard to find now.

[@daviddorka]

Buy some power supplies and match the voltages and then plug them into the board and if it works you could possibly youre own powersupply to match it

[@yerocb]

What a bummer. I gasped a little when i saw them. I never worked on them but had a friend that did and he loved them. Incredible machines in their day.

[@kendawg_mcawesome]

Got a G3 Xserve sitting across the room from me. I will definitely find something not completely useless to do with it, I just need more time, I swear. I've considered running Mac OS X Server 1.0 for some NeXTSTEP goodness. The key difficulty I've experienced is finding information on remote management of these things. I'm guessing much of the documentation was in paper manuals currently residing in some corporation's filing cabinets... Perhaps I can use it as a white noise machine...

[@Danuvox117]

Those G4 and G5 xserves used to litter eBay 10 years ago I guess most have been thrown away by now

[@jackreaper-i1o]

Glad,THE Psiwevri we know is back.

[@tahasiddiqui3629]

great lighting in your videos!

[@soniccdx]

now i need to get one more g5 tower/mac pro and an xserve , and can follow along and get a coffee table . XD

[@Fayeburnmusic]

Love the coffee table ;)

[@JohnDoe-fz1eb]

Should ship me the power supply, I can probably repair it and I have tons of xserve parts!

[@miregoji2959]

The BIOS is gone. It's useless, there's no SATA controller anymore. Battery died then it wiped itself

[@JohnDoe-fz1eb]

@@miregoji2959 BIOS can be theoretically cloned from another machine

[@britneyfreek]

@@miregoji2959what a great design. just like with their efi-on-ssd bullshit they’re pulling off.

[@half-qilin]

I would try putting the hard drives from the G4 into the G5; the hard drives in the G5 might be failing and pulling too much power or simply halting the system before it fully boots.

[@AttilaSVK]

These servers (and even their Intel versions) are quite uncommon here in Central Europe as well. Still, I'd love to get my hands on one. Btw, I'm a sysadmin at a school and we still run a HP DL380 Gen6 from around 2009 :) (that's roughly the same as the last generation Intel-based Xserve)

[@ChristF4rEvEr]

Why Dont You Upload More? Dear Psivewri, i know it takes u long to make nice videos but bro ur vids are incredible and they put a smile on my face! EDIT: I just found out u finished moving, congrats!

[@maxbutton9996]

I have a rack full of these in NSW I'm sure I can get that G4 PSU working and I'd try a different video card with that G5.

[@fullfunk]

G4 and G5 are classics people gonna want to run classic osx on them. more than the xserve intel ones.

[@BluesLuxury]

Thats funny we had 3 of these and I just E-Wasted them today from the school.

[@robsquared2]

To Serve Apple! It's a cookbook!

[@eightsprites]

Cool. My job was to buy servers and running a smaller server room back in those days. Looked at the macs but never got any. Will check video, see if they was any good 😀 edit: Greatings from Sweden 🇸🇪 edit 2: lol.. that table.. used to run my dl380 the same way popped up by two tower pcs in my home lab.

[@TheSpotify95]

4GB RAM in 2004?! That's insane - some laptops from the early 2010s still weren't shipping with 4GB RAM as standard.

[@hrafnkell6132]

blud i have 64 gb ram 4gb is nothing

[@BollingHolt]

Dang dude. Now I have to find an Xserve as well so I can make a coffee table with two of my cheese graters as well 😁

[@Press-Any-Key]

I actually have one of those, however I have the last produced model (late 2009) with dual xeons

[@Techno-Universal]

If Apple made those using M series chips then they could be a serious competitor in the server industry! :)

[@danyalmughal4871]

DUDE,,, You literally just called my monitor junk, Man I'm watching your videos on it for over 5 years now

[@rixas20]

nice, seen these at Linus video but cool to see more about them.

[@Byte_Youtube]

He is very lucky finding those. They can be very, VERY expensive.

[@stevethepocket]

I have a feeling these things weren't actually in service for 20+ years. They probably spent a good few in storage waiting for permission from the relevant bureaucrats to discard them as obsolete.

[@gideondark]

Great video as always! Hi from Michigan, and keep the great videos coming!!

[@Soundwaiv]

A NEW PSEVWRI VIDEO WAKE UP

[@ypesh]

No worries man, thanks for sharing was worth investigating. 🎉🎉

[@jackshink3630]

Can’t get over an iPhone 15 pro is more powerful then both of those combined and fits in your pocket!

[@T3CHGY007]

Best looking coffee table ever!

[@arianaponytail]

thats some really cool rare hardware. pity it did not boot up . I hope they some day get working again.

[@dave4shmups]

Great video! You certainly gave it your best shot.

[@RedShift5]

Not sure how you measured the 12V, the FANs work on 12 V so the fact that they're spinning should mean the 12V rail is OK.

[@123coven6]

If this is in your skill lever then you can try to recap an Xserve G5 Power Supply. I found a video called How to recap an Xserve G5 Power Supply. It's by The House of Moth.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

What a mega score! You lucky dog.

[@king_jacob732yt4]

i have 4 of these that fully work and new drives still in box

[@MrBlakBunny]

omg xserves, i want one, even just the case to refit for a modern computer, i think they look so good

[@davidchait6010]

I remember seeing these back in 2002/2003, I never understood how Apple meant to compete with Linux on Intel at half of the price.

[@matt11251125]

Maybe try plugging in network card and see if there’s any activity. Maybe the gpu is not compatible

[@GeekmanCA]

I have hands-on experience with these from back in the day. You cannibalizing a card from your blue and white G3 was totally appropriate: The BTO graphics card Apple offered for the Xserve G5 was a total ripoff. Luckily, used Mac stores were brimming with those stock Rage 128 cards as the B&W G3 owners typically upgraded to better cards and traded in the stock ones. All my Xserves had second-hand Rage 128 cards. Diagnosing hardware issues is a real pain, as the Xserves have a myriad of sensors and protections to prevent them from damaging themselves (particularly under thermal stress), meaning they won't even turn on. Typically that amber light will have a blink code, but when it's just solid like that, you might be out of luck. 🙁