PCI Slot Server(?) Card

[MrGoboka]

Okay, I need help because I am ungodfully confused as to what I just found. I was browsing a local electronics recycling and refurbishing plant, when I came across a couple of PCI (Just standard, they'd fit in a PC) cards that had a slot for a CPU (!?) and RAM, appearing to be DDR DIMM (I raised an eyebrow to a CPU thinking it was for some wicked graphics card, but these Ram slots (2) really made me confused). After some investigating of the slots that would be visible if installed, from the back of the computer, and it appeared to have an Ethernet, PS/2 (Keyboard(?)), and a Serial Port(?).

It was approximately 12 centimeters long, about 3 wide, and was (I guessed) A server card, of some sort. I had thoughts of putting it in my PC so I could program it to either help my PC work (probably fail) faster, or run a server off of, or whatever.

It seemed to me to be a PCI motherboard. Absolutely bizarre...

Any help on this and what I could do with it (If anything at all) would be unnaturally appreciated. Also, if I can program them for use such as a Server, or t help my PC. Could somebody please include the drivers (For that, I'll have a picture of these cards in by Sunday.

Thanks for the help, and my apologies for the vagueness of this post, I wish I had something to identify them with, BUT I googl'd everything related to them that I could think of.

One final thing, one I saw had the old style chips, that's the large black ones within the black / brown plastic border. Plus a newer looking one had a VIA chip. :\

Again, Thanks. Like I said, I can get an image for you tomorrow.

 

[MU_Engineer]

Sounds like a PC/104 card, an add-in x86 accelerator card for an older 68k or PPC Macintosh, or some kind of slotket. It will be interesting to get a picture of it to see what it really is.

 

[MrGoboka]

It got burried but that isn't it. Standard PCI, it was about the same size as a... Those large EVGA cards(?), only it was all green, PS/2 port, CPU (It was small, the CPU I found for it too, was like a laptop cpu only, thicker). I'll bring my camera in tommorow, and go diggin' just to cure both of our curiosity for this card.

 

[MrGoboka]

http://www.google.ca/imgres?um=1&hl=en&biw=1024&bih=649&tbm=isch&tbnid=9pRAd9rzynenZM:&imgrefurl=http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sun-X1131A-64-2-SunPCi-Penguin-PCI-Card-605-1641-/320608748888&docid=MxWlLQgtkKQPsM&imgurl=http://images.weirdstuff.com/full/26022.jpg&w=400&h=400&ei=amPqT8L8DcXx0gGAo425BQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=368&sig=101073607142545111969&page=2&tbnh=146&tbnw=152&start=15&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:16,s:15,i:170&tx=38&ty=74

THAT IS THE CARD.

 

[popatim]

Its a processor card. It goes into a server or expansion device. High end servers dont typically have cpu's on the motherboard like home pcs do.

 

[MU_Engineer]

http://www.google.ca/imgres?um=1&hl=en&biw=1024&bih=649&tbm=isch&tbnid=9pRAd9rzynenZM:&imgrefurl=http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sun-X1131A-64-2-SunPCi-Penguin-PCI-Card-605-1641-/320608748888&docid=MxWlLQgtkKQPsM&imgurl=http://images.weirdstuff.com/full/26022.jpg&w=400&h=400&ei=amPqT8L8DcXx0gGAo425BQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=368&sig=101073607142545111969&page=2&tbnh=146&tbnw=152&start=15&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:16,s:15,i:170&tx=38&ty=74

THAT IS THE CARD.

That is a processor card. It allows for a Sun workstation or server which has a non-x86 CPU to run a session of Windows (in a window) without putting up with a massive performance penalty of doing direct CPU emulation on the Sun CPUs. Apple used to use this back in the day so people could run DOS and Windows on 68k and PPC Macs and such.

Its a processor card. It goes into a server or expansion device. High end servers dont typically have cpu's on the motherboard like home pcs do.

Many older high-end servers used cards to hold the processors instead of sockets on the motherboard so you could stuff more sockets on one board. Many newer servers however do have their sockets on the motherboard because of the enormous number of I/O pins that must be routed on a modern high-end server socket- it's easier just to daisy chain boards together with HT/QPI cables or cluster them with 10 GbE or IB than to put up with processor cards on modern IMC-equipped CPUs. That is not quite the processor card the OP is talking about, that card is for running another OS that your CPU cannot natively run.

 

[MrGoboka]

Thanks for the help guys, but that leaves one burning question.

I'm a bit explorative (Okay, malicously destructive, but whatever) What would it be able to do within a standard home PC, and how much power would it take? I am assuming it'd suck the life out of my PSU, at 360W.

 

[MU_Engineer]

Thanks for the help guys, but that leaves one burning question.

I'm a bit explorative (Okay, malicously destructive, but whatever) What would it be able to do within a standard home PC, and how much power would it take? I am assuming it'd suck the life out of my PSU, at 360W.

I don't know if it would be able to do anything due to the likely lack of application and driver support in any current x86 OS. Maybe you could run Solaris on your home computer and see if it picks up the card. Power draw is about 30 watts, the card you linked has more pictures and one of them has a picture of the back of the cards that shows power draw (5 A at 5 V, 0.3 A at +12 V.)

 

[MrGoboka]

The one I saw was a WEE bit damaged. Since at the plant they just pile them into a large shipping box, and when it gets full, ship them out, so it had some serious damage.

On the other hand, I saw a few nicer ones, all they need is a CPU, Heatsink, mounts for their unnaturally hugeness, and RAM.

The odd part is that they had DDR DiMM slots, not Standard Dimm.