On Jul 25, 2009, at 12:03 PM, John Musbach wrote:
>> These were giving by a business. I would like to know their value, >> and If selling them on ebay is worth it? > > To get a general idea you can try searching on eBay and limit your > search (advanced search options) to only those listings which have > been completed. There are two general classes of Apple Network Servers (ANSes): 1) brand-new ones and ones which were remanufactured by Apple and were equal to brand-new in every respect (both of these will have "seals" on every externally removable component, most particularly the drawers), and 2) used ones. A brand-new or a factory remanufactured ANS could be worth several hundred dollars to a collector. While ANSes were still functionally usable products, quite a number of years ago, such an ANS could bring $400-$500. But, no longer. A used ANS could be worth $50, depending upon its condition. Damaged or missing components significantly reduce the value as there are NO replacement parts available, save those which have been salvaged from other ANSes. At their end-of-life, all of the extant complete ANSes which Apple owned, including brand-new, factory remanufactured and used units, were sent to a certain liquidator in Northern California. This liquidator, which was also an authorized destructor of Apple products and components, attempted to liquidate its rather large inventory of ANSes on eBay. They put four units up for auction with a minimum price of $0.99 (ninety-nine-cents). There were only two bids on each of the four auction items, and I won all four for $1.99 (one-dollar-and-ninety-nine-cents) apiece, using eSnipe at the last moment. Because of their size and weight, these units would have to be shipped to my premises by freight, and these would have had to be "Gaylorded" for their protection, at a fairly high cost, possibly $100 or more per unit. Not wanting to pay at least $101.99, including packing and shipping, apiece, I elected to pick these up myself, which necessitated a 300 mile round-trip on my part, but which certainly saved at least $400, if not more, in shipping. This liquidator never again attempted an eBay auction of an ANS. They still had at least 56 units on-hand, including a few 500s, but mostly 700s. I was offered additional units, but I declined. I could have transported an additional two or four units in my import SUV. The 700/200 is not a true model. It is really a 700/150 which has had its 150 MHz processor card replaced by the accessory 200 MHz processor upgrade card. The 500s were really 500/132. You can get a general ideal of an ANS from this ... http://www.shiner.info/?info/ans-ad ... site. ANSes were massively extensible, as one might imagine for a true server product, Apple's only true server up to that date. AFAIK all the accessories are gone. An ANS was supplied with one hard drive tray which was populated with either a 2 GB or a 4 GB Seagate UW-SCSI drive. The remaining trays are dummies, and the accessory card and cable kits which are necessary to make the dummy trays usable are as scarce as hen's teeth. I should know as I bought every one which the liquidator had in his inventory. It is my belief that the remaining 56 ANSes were crushed in order to make room for additional Apple-liquidated items. An ANS is essentially a PowerMac 9500 with a different processor card and with two UW-SCSI channels substituted for the single N-SCSI channel. An ANS requires special parity RAM, although conventional RAM may also be used, in some instances. Not withstanding the fact that the ANS has eight RAM slots, and could, conceptually, support 1 GB of RAM, due to a flaw within the ANS's ROM, only 512 MB may be installed, and attempting to install more than 512 MB will result in a hard hang within POST. 1 MB RAM sticks, either FPM or EDO are supported, not withstanding the specification which states that FPM, only, is supported, and 64 MB sticks, or smaller, only, are supported. The best RAM configuration is eight 64 MB parity RAM sticks, which should be 60 ns. The second-best RAM configuration is four 128 MB non-parity RAM sticks, which could be 70 ns Not withstanding the ANS's similarity to the 9500, and the fact that some 9500s had a plug-in ROM which could be harvested for use in an ANS, installing such a 9500 ROM in an ANS will NOT convert it into a Mac. An ANS is forever an A/IX machine (IBM's proprietary version of Unix), but new A/IX licenses are "unobtanium". An alternate is Linux, but installing Linux on an ANS requires considerable expertise. I will be happy to discuss ANSes off-line. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Vintage Macs group. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vintage-macs?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
