At the end of December, everyone looks to the trends for the coming year. Let’s summarize what everyone else is saying. In 2017, more IT managers will virtualize and more operations will move to the cloud. Security is going to be not just a concern, but also a full time position for larger IT operations. Around the office, you are going to have to figure out if you really want hook up your new “smart” refrigerator to the same network where you keep your inventory and accounting records.
Those are predictions, not certainties. For certainties, we need to look back. As if to prove that not everyone is looking forward, a few days ago we answered a call from someone searching for HP 9000 B2600 workstations. It is not an odd request for our company, which sells legacy and EOL systems and parts. Still, it is worth considering exactly what that customer was seeking in the B2600.
Hewlett-Packard introduced the HP 9000 series back in the 1980s, and the B2600 model debuted in 2001. HP discontinued the B2600 in 2008, and cleared remaining stock by 2010. The last software update came in 2011. To put that history in perspective, in 2001 most PCs shipped with a built-in 3.5” floppy drive, and it was not until 2003 that Dell was the first to stop including the 3.5” drive in a PC. Early HP 9000 B2600 workstations shipped with a CD-ROM, but you can find them with a 3.5” floppy in the drive bay. Even the youngest B2600 will have been in service for six years.
The B2600 uses HPs 8600 “landshark” RISC processor that runs at 500 MHz with a 1.5 MB L1 on chip cache and no L2 cache. It was a mid-speed processor in the 2001 field. The B2600 shipped with the same processor throughout its life, although by 2008 quad core processors running at 2 GHz were common. The B2600 tops out at 4 GB RAM, with 1 GB in each of its four slots. It could accept RAM in units as small as 128 MB. There is room in the B2600 for two hard drives but the controllers top out at 146 GB each. The Maximum possible storage is 292 GB.
Despite these modest specs, the HP 9000 series, B2600 workstation is still in wide use today. There are several reasons. It’s popular because it is a solid Unix workstation, and there have not been any new shipping Unix workstations for about four years. HP designed the B2600 to run much, much longer than the three to five year life of a consumer PC box. Their components were built for long workdays, 300 days a year. They are also in demand because when something works, you don’t hurry to change it.
Which brings us back to all those future predictions. To listen to the mass media, or read tech journalists, you would swear that only dinosaurs would be using in-house networks and maintaining servers. Nevertheless, as the popularity of a workstation designed in 2001 shows, predictions and buzz do not always reflect reality. For example, the phrase “Internet of Things” was coined in 1985, and most of the world still has no idea what that means.
While things may move a bit faster in the IT world, most IT systems are maintained for institutions — businesses, governments, hospitals and other massive organizations. Despite the longings of IT managers, their host organizations tend to move glacially.
The future will arrive, but slowly. Until then, systems need to keep running, sometime even long after those systems’ manufacturers offer support. That is why Frontier Computer Corp. exists. We sell refurbished parts — legacy, hard to find, and EOL — right beside the new stuff. We can offer service and support for existing systems, even after OEM support ends. We do it because the world of data processing is vast, and while some people will toe the cutting edge, others are satisfied with a system that works reliably and does not represent a new capital investment.
As it has since 1976, Frontier Computer Corp. can provide new and refurbished IT hardware and enterprise computing solutions. We have servers, drives, modems, routers switches and software. Everything you need to keep your IT running smoothly.
Contact FrontierUS at 866.226.6344.
Frontier Computer Corp. is a leader in providing IT solutions worldwide.
