[h2odragon]

I had a home hacked 1TB+ server, using 5.25in 23GB 8lb monster drives salvaged from a long life as a TV video bank (long, long ago, when dinosaurs walked the earth). There was 60+ actual spindles as i recall.

The drive array was powered by 6x, 400W ATX server supplies with my own wiring harness. This was enough to keep them running but they had to be sequenced carefully to keep from overdrawing the power supplies.

This was all on an UltraSPARC 6k so there was plenty of support for that; bringing up the system always sounded like multiple jet takeoffs tho. Took 15min. When the rack of 10k RPM "quick cache" disks spun up it was like a chorus of the whines of the damned.

[actionfromafar]

I had a MicroVAX in my bedroom which booted with a tick-tack-tick-tack going faster and faster culminating in a crescendo where it sounded like the discs synced up or something.

I'd then login to a prompt and type DIR before I turned it off again. I just pulled the power switch, I had no idea how to do a proper shutdown.

[mikewarot]

I spooled up my SIMH vax just to find out... the proper command is

  @SYS$SYSTEM:SHUTDOWN