The case is large and heavy, at a height of 61.5 cm, a width of 41.5 cm, a depth of 45 cm and a weight of more than 40 kg. Optionally, the ANS 700 also supports redundant and hot-swappable power supply units and an internal drive rack for two further fixed hard drives.
Additional hot-swappable SCSI hard drive modules or a DAT tape streamer can be added to the free slots. Ī unique aspect of the Apple Network Servers is their case: It is fully lockable, extremely accessible, features a small LCD for diagnostics, and its front has seven device slots, with a CD-ROM and one hard drive mounted in them in the standard configuration. Unlike all other Apple computers of the era, the ANS uses a VGA connector for the onboard video an adapter for Apple displays was included.
Other ports include one ADB port, two serial ports and one AAUI port. Six free PCI slots are available for expansion - parts supported under AIX include two Ethernet cards and a SCSI RAID card. FPM or EDO RAM DIMMs are acceptable, in any order, as the machine treats EDO RAM DIMMs as FPM RAM DIMMs.Īll Network Servers feature an internal two-channel Wide SCSI-2 controller, an external 25-pin SCSI-1 connector and a standard 1.44 MB "SuperDrive" floppy.
If even one RAM DIMM is non-parity, then parity checking is turned-off for all RAM, in which case 70 ns RAM DIMMs are acceptable. This is an absolute restriction built into the machine's ROM-DIMM. The machine will not POST (i.e., will not pass the Power-On System Test) if more than 512 MB is installed. For all practical purposes, the maximum RAM configuration is 4 x 128 MB parity DIMMs (512 MB, total) or 8 x 64 MB parity DIMMs (also 512 MB total). The ANS 500/132 shipped with 32 MB of RAM installed (4 x 8 MB 60 ns parity DIMMs manufactured by IBM) and the ANS 700/150 and the ANS 700/200 shipped with 48 MB (2 x 16 MB 60 ns + 2 x 8 MB parity DIMMs also manufactured by IBM). The ANS motherboard has eight 168-pin DIMM parity RAM slots with six of them free (with a maximum amount of 512 MB of RAM specified, even though up to 1 GB is reported to work ). The system bus speed is 44 MHz for the 500, and 50 MHz for the 700s. The L2 cache of the ANS is mounted on a SIMM, with a standard size of 512 KB for the 500 and 1 MB for the 700s. The ANS 700/200 features the more advanced PowerPC 604e at 200 MHz, with an L1 cache of 64 KB. The ANS 500/132 uses a PowerPC 604 CPU clocked at 132 MHz, and the ANS 700/150 has the same CPU at 150 MHz. Apple did not have comparable server hardware in their product lineup again until the introduction of the Xserve in 2002.
The 500/132, 700/150, and 700/200 sold for US$11,000, US$15,000 and US$19,000, respectively.Īpple Network Servers are not to be confused with the Apple Workgroup Servers and the Macintosh Servers, which were Macintosh workstations that shipped with server software and used Mac OS the sole exception, the Workgroup Server 95-a Quadra 950 with an added SCSI controller that shipped with A/UX-was still able to run Mac OS.
This makes them the last non-Macintosh desktop computers made by Apple to date. They are not a part of the Apple Macintosh line of computers they were designed to run IBM's AIX operating system and their ROM specifically prevented booting Mac OS. It was codenamed "Shiner" and originally consisted of two models, the Network Server 500/132 ("Shiner LE", i.e., "low-end") and the Network Server 700/150 ("Shiner HE", i.e., "high-end"), which got a companion model, the Network Server 700/200 (also "Shiner HE") with a faster CPU in September 1996. The Apple Network Server (ANS) was a short-lived line of PowerPC-based server computers manufactured by Apple Computer from February 1996 to April 1997, when it was discontinued due to very poor sales.