New Steam Machine remind you of…

[Steve Stroh]

… the NeXt Cube?

It’s the same form factor, roughly, and cool-looking.

Steve Stroh

[ryan nelson]

i thought "Cobalt Qube"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Qube

(hi, i'm ryan, i'm a list-lurker....)

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[Jason Howe]

Oh man a, a Cobalt Qube...I've wanted one of these for years but have
never been able to lay hands on one.

When I worked at Princeton, a coworker had one on the shelf in his
office with a label on it "thewebistoast". Turns out that Qube had been
used as the emergency webserver for Princeton.edu for when the main site
was down. Everyone in the web group was really fond of those qubes for
various reasons, speed, reliablilty, easy of use, etc.


--
Jason
Sent from my Personal DECstation 5000/25

>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/seattle-retrocomp/CAGh1Bg5%3DL%2BHwRRR2o_z6B9yMqyzOpo4zQhmU%3DQuZvCJrXNsVXQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
>> .

>>
>
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>

[Steve Stroh]

Jason:

I have a Cobalt Qube in unknown condition after all these years that I kind-of plan to put on my Amateur Radio network. Perhaps I should bring it to a meeting for consultation to revive it.

It’s literally been in storage for about a decade now.

Thanks for the reminder and the inspiration!

Steve Stroh

On Nov 18, 2025 at 06:21:20, Jason Howe <ja...@smbfc.net> wrote:

Oh man a, a Cobalt Qube...I've wanted one of these for years but have
never been able to lay hands on one.

When I worked at Princeton, a coworker had one on the shelf in his
office with a label on it "thewebistoast".  Turns out that Qube had been
used as the emergency webserver for Princeton.edu for when the main site
was down.  Everyone in the web group was really fond of those qubes for
various reasons, speed, reliablilty, easy of use, etc.


--
Jason
Sent from my Personal DECstation 5000/25

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[Andrew Witte]

Do they support video out? SPARC processor?

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[Steve Stroh]

More details than I can supply:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Qube

I don’t recall there being a video port on it, but if it did, it would probably be VGA.

Processor wasn’t SPARC, actually MIPS, then AMD x64

On Nov 18, 2025 at 15:07:25, Andrew Witte <zezb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Do they support video out? SPARC processor?

[Jason Howe]

I would expect there's only a serial console (No problem, I or someone
else almost always have a terminal or something able to talk rs232 in
tow). I think the "easy of managment" people talk about was a web-based
GUI.

Assuming yours still has it's Hard Drive with the OG RedHat install and
management pieces, taking an image of that drive would be pretty
important, as I'm not sure if those bits have been perserved elsewhere.

Best,
Jason

--

Sent from my Personal DECstation 5000/25

On Tue, 18 Nov 2025, Steve Stroh wrote:

> More details than I can supply:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Qube
>
> I don’t recall there being a video port on it, but if it did, it would
> probably be VGA.
>
> Processor wasn’t SPARC, actually MIPS, then AMD x64
>
>
> On Nov 18, 2025 at 15:07:25, Andrew Witte <zezb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Do they support video out? SPARC processor?
>>
>
> --
> Steve Stroh (he / him / his)
> steve...@gmail.com
>
> For Amateur Radio / Zero Retries / Conference:

> *Steve Stroh N8GNJ*
> Editor
> *Zero Retries Newsletter*
> st...@zeroretries.net <//st...@zeroretries.net>
> https://www.zeroretries.org
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> https://www.zeroretries.org/p/conference
> *Discussing and creating new technologies in Amateur Radio*

>
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>

[Steve Stroh]

The Qube was one of the first web appliances to offer web server management for mortals with a web-based GUI.

I played with it a bit and was impressed at the time. Mine was provided as a review unit and I never actually used it beyond some basic testing.

On Nov 18, 2025 at 19:00:36, Jason Howe <ja...@smbfc.net> wrote:

I would expect there's only a serial console (No problem, I or someone
else almost always have a terminal or something able to talk rs232 in
tow).  I think the "easy of managment" people talk about was a web-based
GUI.

Assuming yours still has it's Hard Drive with the OG RedHat install and
management pieces, taking an image of that drive would be pretty
important, as I'm not sure if those bits have been perserved elsewhere.

Best,
Jason

--
Sent from my Personal DECstation 5000/25

--

Steve Stroh (he / him / his)

steve...@gmail.com

For Amateur Radio / Zero Retries / Conference:

Steve Stroh N8GNJ

Editor

Zero Retries Newsletter

st...@zeroretries.net

https://www.zeroretries.org

Radios are Computers - With Antennas!

Zero Retries Digital Conferences

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