This Web Server Changed The Internet: The Cobalt RaQ

37 thoughts on “This Web Server Changed The Internet: The Cobalt RaQ”

• I built my own dedicated solid state webserver out of an HP thinclient (a fraction of the size of that RAQ – basically the size of a bible).
  It's been running on a 400mghz single core processor with 128mb of RAM (basically the same as the RAQ) and a 64gb USB stick booting MicroCore Linux (TinyCore Linux minus GUI) for the last… 15 years. Nonstop. 9 watts. Silent. No moving parts.

  Before then I ran my webserver on believe it or not, a super rare hard to score "RIOCAR Empeg" Car Headunit Mp3 player that ran Linux on intenal 3.5 platter drive. I ended up selling that to a music enthusiast as a token of friendship, and the dippy do turned around and sold it to someone else, and so I regretted it.

• "Cobalt moved away from RISC due to the performance and efficiency gains of the x86 processors." – only in the late '90s can such a thing happen (@5:43)

• One of my college roommates interned for Cobalt Networks. One of the projects they assigned him writing the code for front controls and display for the Raq 3. I remember him having prototype servers in his room and we hacked the PCI card to support a sound card (the PCI bus on the server only supported 3.3 volts, and most decent sound cards needed the 5v pin as well. So we had to pull the power with bodge wires from other stable sources on the motherboard. In the end we ended up turning one of the early Cobalt Networks prototype servers into a MP3 jukebox for the house 🤣. I did loooove that blue case too.

• Had one, bought it used. In 2001 I started an Intranet at a public school I worked at. I had students browse the hundreds of photos I took at my school of the many school activities. I kept the Intranet going for a number of years, with each year in a separate folder. A menue allowed easy viewing. This allowed student images to be viewed, but only in the building. So no legal problems. By 2009 I was notified by our ISP the RAQ was hacked and used it for spam mail. Invistagation showed this early server cannot be updated, so it was shut down and removed from service.
  Now you can get Web Service for $5 a month…

• 6:39 – "Initializing IDE" this takes me back bro. Thank you.

• another channel that is gold

• I forgot about yoyos that's on my list of things I failed to get the hang of as a kid along with skateboarding, roller skating and various other things that I'm lucky went out of fashion because I sucked at them haha

• a slightly more modern PC/104 or other SBC would be really cool. either way, really cool videos and great work!

• Oof. When you see your deadname in kernel messages. Fun fact, updating the Cobalt RaQ patchset to work with newer kernels led to me having to file a lawsuit against Paris, France.

• Man this brought back some good memories – I installed dozens of these and the Cube variants in school systems back then. Such a fun time back then

• I actually had one of those HDDs with the rubber wrap. If you are interested I might still have it. Might even work^^

• Now the question after 25 years remains ; can the Cobalt Webservers using the K6-2 be unlocked with additional 128KB of cache and thus have it's performance, increased? Lol.

• I totally forgot about these… a long long time ago </sing>

• You can change password by booting into single user mode by interrupting the boot, editing the Lilo or Grub boot params and appending a 1 (AFAIR). Then you boot into root user without password.

• Those look just like the ones we had in our old hastings location down to the box1 and box2 labels on the racks.

• …👏👍🖖

• Amazing channel with super cool, old but golden techy information videos, just subscribed! Thank you!

• 1998 is also when I was born 🙂

• New linux on this server and test how mutch slower/faster it is?

• This channel needs more subs.

• This is awesome. 🙂

• I got a qube

• love the transparent blue!!

• Love the industrial translucent design…

• I lost all my serious stuff on AOHELLLL!!

• I worked there, was the product manager for the Qube II.

• I remember installing a Cobalt Qube as an email server in 1999 (occasional dial-out to ISP on an ISDN2e line to fetch/send) – delightful little thing to configure…

• I had one of these 🙂

• And…RISC is back with ARM based servers! 🤯🤯🤯😎😎😎👍👍👍

• I mean, it's no Hooli Signature Box 3, but it's ok I guess.

• It bothers me that a rising giant in the server space was bought out and immediately shuttered. Who knows where it would've been now?

• I have a few RAQ3s and used the case, LCD and Buttons with a Raspberry PI server.

• Swapping the motherboard for something newer would basically just be using it for the case. I appreciate the deep dive into hardware history but commodity hardware in an old rack server just doesn't really feel right to me.

• " I did NOT have sethual relathons with that woman! " – Bill Clinton

• Nice blast from the past. Thank you! I remember installing the Cobalt Cubes back in the day! Primarily for email.

• 15.8k subs, this channel is gonna go far ❤

• I bought a raq 4 after the internet bubble from someone who came back from the US. I used the server to create run a Formula 1 management game running a game over the F1 season with 2.500-3.000 active users during the season.

  After that I bought a supermicro which had a software raid which was placed in colocation. But that one gave an issue after a couple of years.

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