Ross's Auctions (sic: yes I know that the third 's' should not be there, but that's how they spell it) today had a Cobalt RaQ 4 up for auction, so I thought I'd go along and see what it went for. I set a ceiling of $100, knowing that the only way I'd secure it for that price is if nobody there knew what it was, and was scared to bid blindly. I'm saving for the move into Vic Park with Maggie, and can't afford to be squandering too much money at the moment. Yet, this was the first time I'd seen a RaQ up for auction, so I thought I might strike it lucky...

Considering they sell on eBay for about US$600-700, I thought that anything below AU$400 would be a real bargain (for a collector/someone who knew what it was). As the machine is just a PIII 450 with dual 20GB disks (in RAID 1 formation) it's not too special on the inside.

Yet clearly it's very special on the outside! The Cobalt symbol on the front glows light green when it's on, similar to my Cobalt Qube 2.

These machines were originally introduced to the market by Cobalt as a simple, cheap and easy to configure "web hosting company in a box" solution. At 1RU they could be stacked 42 high in a six-foot rack, making for a sensible co-location or dedicated server solution. Vianet used Intel ISP2150 boxes, but should have bought these instead. Another reason Vianet a fools :)

Cobalt was so successful that Sun bought them out; back in the time when being bought out by Sun would have been a good thing :) The punch their little blue boxes packed was infringing on Sun's entry-level UNIX server market, so the quickest way to stop them was a takeover. Shortly after, Sun ceased producing the co-branded Cobalt/Sun devices, and one of the dot-com greats finally ground to a halt.

The "Best Looking Rack-Mountable Machine" award still has to go so SGI though for their range of servers. This one pictured is an Origin 350. Don't be confused but the cobalt.gif filename, as I was originally ;) I know an SGI when I see it...

In the end, a young geek bought this particular RaQ 4 for $275 (plus 10%, plus 10%) and I thought it was a good buy. My quirky museum would love another Cobalt, especially a RaQ, but at just over $330 bucks, someone else can enjoy it instead.

I must admit, it was weird, but when I saw it went to a young guy just like me, I felt a sense of satisfaction. At least it wasn't sold to a grumpy, stingy old dealer who was going to make a stack of bucks by reselling it on eBay.