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Tiki Beast 9650/G4 450
  

 
A few years ago I bought a perfect Macintosh 9650/350 workgroup server via eBay. One of those things that I always wanted (1997), but at around $4000.00 USA, well I was going to have to wait awhile. At the time I could not even afford the 9600/300. I am happy to say that I now own many 9600s and when this 9650 showed up on eBay — and I must add that very few still do — I pounced!

These were exciting times, as we were in the process of moving into our new office. My plan was to make this Mac into an all around integrated server. I even picked up a NIB copy of AppleShare IP 6.3.0. We ran new CAT5E, bolted my rack in the utillity room, and as I had extra room on the bottom shelf, I put my untoched 9650.

  
image
  

 
And there it sat. I would like to say that I had not forgotten about it, I was going to turn this 9650 into a beast, well now I must admit that it fell off my top 10 list. From time to time I visited the rack, a hard reboot of our router, add a new switch to the rack, a quick dust off every now and than. Prolly the last time I had touched it was to scoot it over to make room to put a retired 9600 next to it. Fast forward to April, 2004.
 
image

 
the 9650 “Before” Image

 
I have 3 9600s in my production room. All have been upgraded to G3s. And a few $ have been spent (RAM, Seagate HDs, etc) to keep them happy. They are darn good computers. I have only retired one of my 9600s over the years (motherboard went south). Anywho My personal 9600/G3 500 started giving me fits. Seagate HDs started biting the dust. Johnny Cash bit it (crash and burn) and than 3 weeks later my Sys HD (boot drive) failed. The boot drive was not very old. The HD passed every test. Why was this drive failing in this computer?

 
I pulled my system (boot drive) out of my disabled 9600 and placed it into another 9600 drive bay (KonTiki). Hmmmm, for some reason it would not mount. Yikes, after a re-boot, the “Oh No” ? showed its face on the desk top (KonTiki). Oh my, after a few tests I realized that the SCSI ribbon cables that connected my initio card to my Seagates had failed in both machines.

The new ultra 320 ribbons showed up the next day. My KonTiki 9600/G3 greeted me with a happy face, my 9600 did not. At that moment, my forgotten 9650/350 popped into my mind.

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