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So i was given 2 of these servers a couple of years ago and they've been sitting in basement while i procrastinated about what to do with them. Its a Compaq Proliant ML530. Dual 1GB Pentium III Xeon Processors motherboard with 8 2GB RAM chips, Huge dual power supplies etc...

My question is, Is this worth trying to sell as a whole, part out, or scrap? What would you recommend? Is anyone familiar with these parts? They weigh as much as a bus, so i don't think anything involving shipping is worth it. I know they're outdated but I'm having some trouble finding out if they still sell or not.

Thanks!

Those were top notch machines back in the 90s. My company purchased one in 1998 for about $22,000 and I loaded Novell Netware 4.11 on it. Yours seems a little newer than that. One draw back is that there are no hard drives in this unit. I'm sure there's someone somewhere running one of these in a dark and dusty server room.

You could list the parts on eBay and not have to ship the entire unit. The case alone weighs as much as the boards.

It may be worth selling here. I know your ram modules are in the sweet spot of size and speed. Sell them in pairs to make more money.

Those were upper entry level servers when they were released. Quite a few still running today.

The storage card can fetch a bit too.

Totally broken apart and waiting for real value vs quick sale you’re looking at around $250-$750 in parts.


If you want to sell the whole system they run around $800-$1200 today with a single dual processor card and is installed.
You’ll need a hard drive (SCSI 2 or SAS I believe) and to figure out what to put on it. Most ran NT Server or Netware but that would generally pointless today.
I’d suggest tracking down a new copy of Windows 2000 Server Client. you could also go the Free route and load up a full NetBSD. It lowers the overall value though.
You could also go the HPUX route, versions ending with a C are ready to run on the Compaq systems. You need to find a late V10 or early V11 release.

A big section in value on these is having the OS and it being “released” so a new user can activate licenses. Both hpux (10+) and Win2K server start in the low $100s.
Add server 2004 and the price for the unit jumps over $1000. Load up NetBSD or Darwin and you won’t get over $800.

Do watch that weight. Bus is an understatement. On the lowest config your in the 30s but at fully loaded with dual power supplies and international UPS cube they maxed out around 100LBs or more. Some of those Compaq server cases could be over 10lbs empty.

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You have an open third cube bay; no fan. Any chance it had the lead acid ups in it? I’ve never seen one outside the case! 8)

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Thanks so much for the info! I do have several hard drives in the caddies that came with them. Not quite enough to fill it but probably half way. I haven't tried them out to see what's on them yet. They are 18GB a piece if i remember correctly. I'll admit that
I'm not extremely knowledgeable when it comes to large servers like this. As for the 3rd open bay, it appears to just be unused. It was sitting in a server closet, unused for years, so god only knows what was cannibalized. I'm not home at the moment, but can check when I get out of work in a few hours and get some more details.

Yeah, no UPS in there. Just an open cavity. Ill have to shop around to what's selling more right now and how i want to go about it. I'm not seeing any of these having been sold on Ebay. Are there any other tech selling sites that is better for this kind of stuff (whole server)?

I’m not home but I have a few direct sell links. Mostly they’re used to sell camera and A/V or abused to sell game systems but computers move too.

I did see a handful of listing on ebay under completed. Not sure if sold or not.
It’s a toss up on if you should sell it while or some of the high value parts.
I’ll look through the specs later and do some digging. And return later today or midday tomorrow.

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Well, the processor card looks to be all over the place from $20 or so to $100ish.

The memory Pairs run around $20-$40.

The drive trays tend to be in the $20 range and the PSU can fetch $50+

There’s one full server posted on ebay for 1200.

I found one on hard drive exchange that sold for 850 with NetBSD. Another for $720 with NT3.5 or 4 Server.
Both with free shipping

Looks like a wait for buyer type if you are patient. A whole working unit will far exceed parts and scrap values.
It’s a bit of a wait though I think.

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Thanks so much for the advice! Im going to try my hand in getting it running properly and sell it as a whole. If not, i'm likely going to part it out. I just don't have the storage space.

The fastest and easiest OS choices would be
Free(ish)
OpenBSD
Free BSD

Paid:
Windows NT 3.5 or 4 Server
Windows Server 2000
Microsoft WorkgroupServer 2020

From experience Debian and it’s derivatives won’t work easily so I’d actually suggest not going the Linux route unless you understand alternative repositories (not secondary).

Better resale but harder to set up
Darwin x86 (MacOS with X or Wayland instead of Metal+PDFDI)
Ghost BSD
NetBSD
Windows 2000 (pulse server extensions micropackage)
OpenStep

Gonna cost you
Windows XP-MCE pro ultimate. The last version of XP on disc. Released in 2016. Watch for fakes. Install defaults to international English, German, or French so just change it to EN-US in the LNG drop down box.

RedHat Linux Server
Comes with a few years of device support. You’re buy t will be happy.

Enterprise BSD
Like RedHat, comes with support.

Unix 7 with Wayland.

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