The Cobalt Qube was a

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...

server appliance A computer appliance is a home appliance with software or firmware that is specifically designed to provide a specific computing resource. Such devices became known as ''appliances'' because of the similarity in role or management to a home a ...

product line, meant to be

web servers A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiates ...

, developed by

Cobalt Networks Cobalt Networks was a maker of low-cost Linux-based servers and server appliances. The company had 1,900 end user customers in more than 70 countries. During the dot-com bubble, the company had a market capitalization of $6 billion despite only ...

, Inc. (later purchased by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...

) from 1998 to 2002 featuring a modified

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta releas ...

operating system and a proprietary GUI for server management. The original Qube systems were equipped with RM5230 or RM5231 microprocessors but later models used

AMD K6-2 The K6-2 is an x86 microprocessor introduced by AMD on May 28, 1998, and available in speeds ranging from 266 to 550 MHz. An enhancement of the original K6, the K6-2 introduced AMD's 3DNow! SIMD instruction set, featured a larger 64 KiB ...

chips.

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is ava ...

operating system has been ported to both the Cobalt Qube and RaQ (see External links).

Models

The Qube 2700 was the first product released by Cobalt Networks in 1998. Mark Orr, one of the Cobalt Networks' CEOs, came up with the

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, p ...

color. The green LED in the front was Bill Scott's idea. The 2700 was not a development version number but came from the atomic number of

, 27. The Qube 2700 used the RM5230 microprocessor. The next product was called the Qube 2800 before being sold. But, released in 2000, was eventually called the Qube 2, leaving the ''2800'' to designate the system type. The Qube 2 used the RM5231 microprocessor. Under an OEM arrangement, the Qube 2 units were also produced by Gateway in the form of the Gateway Micro Server. The casing featured on these units was black instead of cobalt blue. The Qube 3, released in 2002, used an

CPU at either 300 MHz or 450 MHz and was the last product in the Qube line. A fourth Qube model was in development but was never released.Qube 4 – CobaltFAQs
/ref> However, several models were released in the

data center A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommun ...

-friendly

Cobalt RaQ The Cobalt RaQ is a 1U rackmount server product line developed by Cobalt Networks, Inc. (later purchased by Sun Microsystems) featuring a modified Red Hat Linux operating system and a proprietary GUI for server management. The original RaQ system ...

product line after the Cobalt Qube was discontinued.

References

External links

*{{Cite web , url=http://www.sun.com/hardware/serverappliances/eol.html , title=Sun Microsystems Server Appliances: End of Life Products , access-date=November 22, 2006 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080611045046/http://www.sun.com/hardware/serverappliances/eol.html , archive-date=June 11, 2008 , url-status=bot: unknown , df=mdy-all
CobaltFAQs wiki

NetBSD/cobalt port
* Brian Smith'
NuOnce
closed down in Jan 2009 and his PKGs for the CobaltRAQ/Clones/BlueQuartz servers ar
archived
Sun servers Server appliance

Models

See also

References

External links