GRUB is the GRand Unified Bootloader. Incedently that's where you need to be in order to boot the RHL into single user mode to clear the root password. Provided the admin who set the machine up didn't put in a bootloader password, you can punch into the password file and edit it. They usually don't unless it's a critical system. As for the keyboard and mouse not working, I'd bet pennies to dollars you have to be shelled in via the serial ports. A fun trick to foil hackers is disabling the USB drivers to prevent direct access to the machine. See: Above password clearing attack.

If the motherboard plug into something even bigger, shouldn't that be called Grandmother board?

grub is the bootloader used for alot of linux based systems. very versatile system allowing you to select from multiple installed kernels and also will allow booting multiple OS's including windows

Aye, let's just remember why we're here: our love of The Dave. A good weekend to everyone.

Dave, Love it when you take apart these industrial computers!

Yup, as people have said... the Linux kernel was probably custom-complied and slimmed down (no USB support). Booting up the other entry, the one not labelled "custom" would probably enable you to use the mouse/keyboard. Not certain, though.

Really nice video covering this stuff, I've a noisy 5U rack mount industrial PC next to my desk at work at the moment, having returned to the world of electronics, industrial control and measurement after a few years away.

Dave, if I may, a tip for future videos: whenever in POST (the screen you see when first powering the system) you could simply press the PAUSE\BREAK button on your keyboard. This will halt all processes so you could read the information on screen. When ready to go on, simply press enter. ;)

as for the mouse not working, ive never used redhat maybe the version of redhat doest support usb mice. been using linux for 6 years now and its rock solid as long as you dont mess with it.

Brilliant overview! I didn't know these things existed!

Cheers Dave, have a pleasant Sunday down there :D

Hey Dave, the inside of this computer reminds me of one I had back in the late 80's it was a Basis 108 And was German made. But it was Pre -hard Drive Era, Dos based OS. and had two 5 1/4 Floppy drives. But it worked out because it was compatable with the Apple II E computer which I had learned programming on. and I wrote Alot of interesting programs on it.

Comparing Red Hat Linux to Windows 3.1...

Dust usually doesn't get in due to the filters, and the socket contacts are usually heavily gold plated to prevent corrosion. But yes, not ideal. But when you have to mount half a dozen NI cards, there isn't much you can do about that.

I am working in Avionics Electronics industry, we use these PC for our Test equpments, for different interfaces we use those PCI lanes, like Analog I/O card, RS232/422 card, MIL 1553,are some

Wow! That is the cleanest industrial PC I've ever seen!

As an IT developer one of the best things I ever did, to learn about the inners of a computer, was to build one myself - even if it was a bit more expensive. The best bit was that I did not get all that extra guff that you get with a pre-built model.

That is NOT a PCI slot at the end of the board towards the front. It is a 32 bit ISA slot.

You have to enable detection of usb keyboard and mouse in the BIOS. Award BIOS is quite common in old motherboards.

Oh and BTW, win 3.11 wasn't really an Operating System, it was a window manager running on top of DOS, only really providing an easier to manage UI for users to manage files, installations etc. People who didn't need that stuff never really launched into windows since it was a pretty big resource hog. Windows NT of course was another beast entirely, which is why that was the foundation for all later versions, not just the "professional" sector. I personally never really used windows before win 95, and even then I generally just used it for it's ease of multi tasking, so generally I had a script that booted it, launched a couple of DOS prompts and the didn't bother me anymore. It is surprising that you say industrial computers back then launched 3.11 in seconds. Not the seconds part, booting DOS and then loading the window manager was a pretty light weight task compared to loading modern operating systems. No, what baffles me is the fact 3.11 was run on any kind of industrial or otherwise critical machine given how NT was both much more stable and much more easily managed as a part of a larger "ecosystem". Can't think of any time I really saw windows 3.11 being used professionally outside of small 1 to 6 person business to write e-mail and use "Windows Works" to create invoices and extremely annoying flyers, menus, price list, ads etc.

a lot of people confuse industrial machines with supercomputers, when in reality they are based around very low wattage cpus, even the mars rover is a g3 computer

I did use a PS2 keyboard. It worked in the BIOS but not in linux.

that's a pretty impressive system, and I agree, they are reliable as hell, it's like the Dell Precision T5400 that a local company's been running continuously for 4 years (since they started) without a single breakdown... and that's in a REALLY tough environment... I think my older T3400 that I use as my main rig got off lightly to say it gets a break in a power cut!!

I've been collecting them for years I probably have about 13 different touch screen industrial PC all in ones I like playing around with them

I have one up stairs it's a old CCTV system, amazing system but the amount of pci cards and slots in use and the construction and frame are a work of art. Not to mention it has a pci system on chip card with its os built in , hardisks hot swappable , shame every cap on the mother board is pop'd

Man, I love this guy!

You can press the pause key while booting up to stop the postscreen from jumping to the next thing.

I worked for a warehouse that's been using the same computers for 30 years and they kept yelling at me because I couldn't install windows 7 on their terminals and they fired me because I told them that they needed to upgrade the hardware.

Dave, next time you want to look up at the booting process of a pc. You could use the "Pause Break" key. It pauses the booting and lets you analyze it properly.

Dave, I would keep it. Make it your home server and let it control all the home automation stuff. Was nice to see one up close. Thanx.

Use it as a server Dave since you got the enterprise Red Hat. But electricity isn't cheap looking at the power supply and all the electronics.

No it does work perfectly for a camera. Mind you, that's was CF II card several years ago, so maybe technologically it's different today, but back then i realized the technical datasheet do specified whether it is bootable. Of course i asked for technical datasheet from OEM after it didn't work as it was a project for a medical environment.

You know, these are not really used in industrial manufacturing equipment, but are instead used for test stations that run cables to the machines that do the testing of products for QA. What I mostly see are Allen-Bradley or Siemens programmable logic controllers that do the actually grunt work of controlling the machinery itself. You should tear down a PLC to see just how ruggedly built they are. They have to switch mains power and handle lots of voltage transients and electrical noise.

my company used to have tons of this pc as server... i remember my 1st time opening one, it really interesting... but now they are almost phase out in favor of proper server which stored in a data center somewhere in the city.

Definitely! I've been running Fedora and Kubuntu on my systems for a long time now and not really missed windows at all! I can run VMware for windows if I desperately need it but I haven't used it in a long time.

In the situations I used them in, yes, Win 3.11 is better. Almost instant boot, and no file corruption on power switch-off (don't know if that's the case for linux)

You would not been able to log into it with out a former username and password unless there was an obviously guessable one, or one without a password. You can sometimes get around that by booting a live or rescue linux from cd and then mounting the system drive and altering the passwd files, or for example, just nulling a password... in etc/passwd in the mount. Then you could reboot and log in. Also the older config manager would want to adjust its config if you moved a card.

They are even if there are no slots present ! Check out specs of companion voltage, fan monitoring & control chips. Some of them contain LPB - low pincount bus which is variation of ISA bus !

My first PC was a 486 DX2 at 40 Mhz, the single channel IDE controller was just lyke this board, ISA + PCI connector.

Just more detailed with my experience is that i have a project using an embedded computer with BIOS can configured with CF bootup, still not all card works. What you tell me is another application, but it's good to know!

I tried PS2 as well, worked in BIOS but not in linux

Unit was so clean? Was it removed from service or excess stock?

Never did I think I'd see a motherboard/backplane with an ISA connector and SATA connectors together...

What's up with the Image stabilizer on this video? It goes crazy! Edit: I'm surprised at you Dave.. All fair that you aren't a Linux fella, but really? GRUB is a standard and universal bootloader.. Surprised that you haven't come across it before. great vid.

PSU looks exactly like relabeled FSP one. The same case, same vents, same "Full range" sticker (means that this model has APFC). Search for something like FSP300-60PLN. Or Zalman ZM300B (it is relabeled FSP PSU). Only power ratings on this "IEI" PSU are lower.

I have what is basically the case of this machine, just a big 4U rack mount box with some fans and filters. I think it is designed for sitting other equipment inside of to dust proof it, I was considering cutting out some mounting holes and stuff to build a computer inside there

So.. FAT16 file systems do never get corrupted? What a weird idea.. :D Windows file systems - even up to the kinda journaling NTFS - suffered from file system corruption a lot.

What do you clean your devices with? They always look like new inside when you open the cover. In many cases they are older than 10 years.

You're right. If you use a USB card reader, it might not work. That depends on the card reader though, and not on the card. But a CF card slot wired to an IDE-port should just work, if your BIOS allows it. Most built-in card readers connect to a USB header on the motherboard, but ones on the motherboard itself are often connected with IDE, and meant to be booted from.

GRUB = GRand Unified Bootloade witch is one of 2 bootloaders used for linux the oter one is LILO (LInux LOader) Kudzu is just checking for new hardware during boot and let you set various parameters for the hardware ..

GRUB is the 'GRand Unified Boot-loader' that is very common on Linux based systems. Have seen many similar systems (and much older) used in engineering works for process control and distribution of data to CAD/CAM machines. Not a bad bit of kit, certainly still a useful box :-)

Very interesting as to how modular they are... would be very quick and easy to swap a part out if it happened to fail.

Redundant power supplies only help if you have shoddy supplies to begin with OR two isolated power sources. It's cheaper and just as reliable to have an adequate size UPS to allow you to properly shut the system down.

You can put it to single user mode and get root access, then have a peak on what files they left off.

To my knowledge there isn't a replacement for GRUB, unless you're talking about LILO. But GRUB kind of replace LILO. GRUB is a really capable bootloader, you can use it for a lot of things and it can save you in situations where you otherwise can't boot.

Can't post a link, but Google "JBT Foodtech DSI waterjet portioner" to see a machine that uses an Advantech Industrial PC to directly control several 2-axis cutting heads. The PC runs QNX with a custom GUI. No PLC in these machines, the servos are connected to the controller cards in the PC via fiber optic cable.

food for thought: USB ports disabled to prevent tampering?

There is a version of Kon-Boot for Linux. it is in the older version however.

Have some patient and replace all cap, it's the electrolytic cap right? They usually the common problem.

I don't think you need special drivers to boot from CompactFlash. CF is electrically identical to IDE, so you could just connect it if you really wanted to.

Also, linux rebuilds the usb stack every time on boot and sometimes it will prioritize the mouse and keyboard at the bottom of the IO stack once it loads the GUI. It's pretty random.

that 'PCI slot' behind the ISA slot isn't actually PCI. The whole slot is VESA Local Bus. The front part is compatible with ISA.

So if i need ISA in 2016, industrial PCs are the way to go? :) Maybe I should have one, for playing around with all my old PCI and ISA cards :D

Hmm interesting! I wonder if its power consumption is low, it may be a big box but the main board looks nice and efficient :)

What is your e-bay store thing, you only have a link to the Amazon one

That thing is SWEET.

I'm not sure why - but when that banana pops into frame - pissed myself.

Dave, just so you know, this video just showed up in my subscription "inbox". This seems to have happened to others as well since there are so few likes compared to the previous one... Damn KZfaq

Wow you are best thankyou for that tip.

He's a professional engineer. He's got better things to do than explore man pages for some system he probably plans to sell. So yeah, he has much better things to do. Just be grateful for the tear downs and what he gives us, for free.

Interesting fact about compact flash cards: most cards are IDE compatible, and can be used as a regular IDE drive. The BIOS and operating system will detect these CF cards as regular hard disks, with CHS and/or LBS addressing and everything. Most likely that CF card slot is just a "modified" IDE channel. Completely transparent to the system.

I don't give a shit what I get for it on ebay. I'm explaining how in my industry experience these industrial computer ARE very reliable. Stop thinking my comments have an ulterior motive, they don't.

Based on the redhat version 2.4 and the Bios version, this computer is at least 10-15 years old.

Depends what you do, secondly windows 3.11 isn't an operating system. It really is just DOS. DOS is reliable to me, unless of course you start loading graphics drivers to play games, well that was in the 90s.

wow that "ISA/PCI" slot 5:20 looks like VESA Local Bus, and it's connects motherboard? that is weird. VESA was superseded by other 32 bit standards PCI because tied a card directly to the processor bus mainly intel 486 as fsb speeds increased, VLB stability became increasingly difficult to manage.

Also, Celeron is definitely not a prime spec part. CF is the same protocol as IDE, and is pin compatible.

I really like the blue card with the RJ45 serial connectors

3.11 wfw really ran on top of dos, and dos you could turn off anytime unless you had a special drive that you needed to park, then you would run park.com and it would move the head to a special cylinder that it could park on when you turned it off.

Whats on those drives??? That would make a good show. lol :)

USB was probally removed from that system to increase stibility its not something that would be hard to do for a person who knows there kernels

Win 3.11 wasn't that great but it ran on top of DOS which was great. Also, Dave, if you need help "cracking" the password on that thing send me a message, it's trivial to get into these things if they haven't encrypted anything and it doesn't look like they have.

The Pentiume 4-HT in the system probably keped the room where this system was housed warm on those cold days. I am not sure what you could do with this system other then a fire wall, unless you add in some more memory.

That ISA + PCI slot has PCI written on it but looks a lot as an VESA Local Bus slot...

You won't get me waxing lyrical about the UPS, because I have hardly any experience with UPS systems, or this brand.

I didn't know ISA ports were still used! Very interesting...

No the latest stable release of RHEL was 51 days ago. Fedora was biased on the old RHL(different from RHEL) ages ago but is now a community run distro that redhat branches for there RHEL builds

We have a computer at work with 1996 version of AIX UNIX, until a couple of years ago it was the 1988 version. Why? they hold archived medical records which need to be accessed in the future. Old computers are still used heavily in industry as they're (theoretiaclly) rock solid, all the bugs worked out over decades. UNIX and Linux are really good for this sort of thing. TTY is a standard serial terminal for telnet etc. access, and that's what we use. Ours is really unreliable, but that's the NHS

That Nokia 3310 @ 16:30 ... Brilliant!

You could build an insane DVR with capture cards in all those slots.

id want one just for the case. be great as a server rack case for Storage

on Grub * Press e to edit the entry (at the ELCustom) Press a or e to append this entry. At the end of the line add the word single or the number 1. Press Enter to accept the changes. Press b to boot this kernel. at the # prompt type passwd yourpassword say shutdown -r now login with user root password yourpassword hopefully there is no grub password in place :)

You could use the recovery mode to recover the user and pass

Grub? Ancient? Still used in todays Enterprise systems. GRUB is still (In my opinion) the best bootloader as it can boot anything and is still being updated today. Just because it looks like dos doesn't mean its old...!

that end card is not a graphics card, its the motherboard, its a called backplane system.

So it's based on a single board computer? Also, please try a Kon-Boot disk on that PC. We love to see what the previous owners left on the desktop.

SATA SSD DOM industrial ssd. Thank you that is some awesome tech.

You know you can use regular third party batteries on APC UPS's, right?

Something like that would be perfect for my CNC milling machine buildup.

I'm sure it was, I didn't start to use linux until windows vista was released, just saying as it is now :) and BSD is based on unix right?

Dave, could you sell only the hard disk?