Author: sgeorge, Posted on: 16 April 2026 12:59
New project time!!! We picked up a classic Cobalt Qube 2!
The boxes that bootstrapped the 90s internet boom! Cobalt Networks, aka later on SUN, made these cute little boxes, or 1u racks at a tine when nobody else was really doing it. So we got the classic QUBE, and the RAQ.
The first of the Qubes was a 150mhz MIPS powered machine, using an RM5230 cpu designed by Quantum Effects Design (QED) and paid for by the MIPS consotrium.
The next (and the one we have) was a slight speed bumped Qube 2 with a 250mhz RM5231!
Maybe we should try and quantify all the models;
Funny enough the RM5230/RM5231 is part of the R5000 family, that QED designed, but was more famously used in the SGI O2 and Indy workstations, so the chip is in good company!
This was bought sight unseen, I dont know if it works, and it didnt come with a power supply.
You can see on the back it has a funky proprietary plug (2 or 3 pin), which my goal is to replace with a barrel jack. The nice thing about this model and its predecessor, is they just use straight 12VDC at 3.3A. (Later models suck as the Qube3/RAQ4 etc use multiple voltages in the shift to x86 and is not so simple to replace).
Once we get power, its time to rip the old hard drive out and replace with a small sata drive, and while I'm in there we will replace the ram and the fan.
(ok, I poked some raw wire in the pinouts to see if it lives) Cobalt Microserver Diagnostics - 'We serve it, you surf it'
Cobalt Microserver Diagnostics - 'We serve it, you surf it'
Built Tue Dec 15 04:11:42 PST 1998
1.LCD Test................................PASS
2.Controller Test.........................PASS
5.Bank 0:.................................64M
6.Bank 1:.................................0M
7.Bank 2:.................................0M
8.Bank 3:.................................0M
9.Serial Test.............................PASS
10.PCI Expansion Slot....................**EMPTY**
12.IDE Test................................PASS
13.Ethernet Test...........................PASS
16.RTC Test................................PASS
At least we now know its birthday! Its 27 years old.
While we are in there we also need to check out for any leaky caps! :( boooo
One weird side project I want to do while were in its guts, is to hook up the LCD backlite to the power rail, I dont know why the backlights were never hooked up, and if its trash, I'll just replace the LCD as its a standard 16x2 one, so easy to get with a standard pinout!
The motherboard is a custom pcb with two PCI slots, the CPU board sloat is actually in backwards.
Weirdly, the VT82C586 is a Socket 7 PCI to ISA bridge/system controller (we already have a MIPS PCI controller on the main board), but this is what gives us our IDE capability.
The two giant Intel 21143-PD chips are our ethernet controllers, accompanied by two LevelOne chips are LAN tranceiver chips.
And here is the CPU board, we can see the RM5231E-250Q by Quantum Effect Designs. The big chip at the top of the screen is an FPGA, an QuickLOGIC QL8X-12B. The GT-64111-P-1 is a 64bit MIPS PCI controller.
The big difference with our Qube motherboard vs the RAQ motherboard is the absence of a SCSI chip or even space for it. (see below, over on the left side we have an LSI 53C810 aka NCR then Symbios, then LSI, so its common to see drivers under those other names, but 53C810 is generic enough).
(dont include links in your comments.)