I was wondering why it had 6 CPUs (as opposed e.g. to 8). Seems that ALR did some clever engineering to work around a limitation in the chipset which was only designed for 4.<p>> 6x6 is based on the same 450GX chip set (previously known as Orion) as competitors' four-CPU offerings. The reason everyone else is shipping four-CPU systems is the chip set's 2-bit CPU addressing scheme -- allowing for four-CPU IDs. What ALR has done is implement two sets of three CPUs, where the missing fourth CPU in each set is actually a stand-in for the other entire group. The Pentium Pro's round-robin multitasking approach is preserved, and the four-CPU limit is broken.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.sandyflat.net/digerati/gatewayalr9000/infoworld%20review/index.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.sandyflat.net/digerati/gatewayalr9000/infoworld%2...</a>
ALR!!! I hadn't heard that name in eons. Didn't even know they were still extant in 1997. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, they were selling some of the beefiest professional-grade x86 hardware -- workstations and servers -- around. They were among the first (besides Compaq) to ship 386 and 486 hardware and early on the EISA bandwagon too.
I'm shure alot of you have seen this already. If not, it's an entertaining 45 minutes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk</a>
(Here's What Happens When an 18 Year Old Buys a Mainframe)
Crazy how these things depreciate to basically zero monetary value over time. Compare that to say, the convenience store on my corner, which is largely unchanged since the 1970s.
When one of my employers closed our site and merged operations with our Chicago office at the end of 2001, we were left with surplus equipment. Nobody wanted about 4 giant quad-PPro servers, so I took them. I never did anything with them and honestly don't remember who made them..we were mainly an HP shop, so maybe? They sat on rollers on the floor, and came up to about the bottom of a desktop, and were square boxes maybe 2 ft on a side. I think they may still be holding up a table at my father's office...