[Beowulf] QsNet (one) gear, anyone interested?

[Michael Brown]

Hello all,

I've recently ended up with a complete QsNet interconnect setup - a fully 
loaded QM-S128 with 126 QM-400 cards and associated cables. Now, I'm 
obviously not going to be using all of this. I don't have 16 computers to 
cluster, let alone 126, and the 700W power consumption of the switch makes 
running it kinda expensive :)

Upon some reading, it appears as though each of the individual 16-port cards 
in the QM-S128 is the same as the card in the 16-way QM-S128, save for the 
power supply setup and the JTAG connector. Specifically, it looks like if I 
remove the DC-DC converter from the card and figure out the pinouts for the 
3.3V power and JTAG connectors (neither should be too difficult), I've got a 
decent chance at getting one of the switch cards to work without the whole 
chassis.

My question here is: how many people would be interested in some of this 
gear? If there's a few people interested, I'll try and do a good job on one 
of the cards to get an accurate price (guesstimate at the moment $200-$250 
for the switch based on PSU + 1U enclosure + packing, plus ~$20 per card + 
cable). If noone is interested I'll just do the job to the point that it 
works for me :) I'd prefer to sell in sets of 16, otherwise I'll end up with 
a whole lot of cards and cables that are of no use. Also, given that I'm in 
Australia and each of the cables is big and heavy, shipping overseas 
wouldn't be especially cheap.

Cheers,
Michael