<html dir="ltr"><head></head><body style="text-align:left; direction:ltr;"><div>Hi,</div><div><br></div><div>that's correct, there also was a natural connection between Cobalt and Symantec as the EMEA Vice President for Cobalt, George Korchinsky used to be the</div><div>EMEA Vice President for Symantec.</div><div><br></div><div>Best regards,</div><div>Rickard</div><div><br></div><div>On Tue, 2020-12-15 at 02:25 -0600, ^Gecko^ wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:2px #729fcf solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>I remember Symantec had the 'Velociraptor" firewall appliance, which was a raq of some sort, except the front bezel was yellow instead of......cobalt blue.</div><div>I don't know if that was some kind of licensing deal or what.<br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 6:39 PM Rickard Osser <<a href="mailto:rickard.osser@bluapp.com">rickard.osser@bluapp.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote type="cite" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:2px #729fcf solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>Hi,<br><br>Yeah, walking down memory lane... <br><br>I got a Qube 2700 from a little know company named Cobalt Microserver. No 88 when I checked the s/n...<br><br>Anyway I saw this small notice in Linux Journal I guess:<br>-<br>Can you guess what DaveM is doing now?<br><br>Yeah, porting Linux to MIPS at Cobalt Microserver..<br>-<br>DaveM ported Linux to Sparc and by using that I knew about him. I also hajj opened to get the exact same idea for an integrated Soho server with a Web-gui about 2 weeks before I saw the notice. I stopped developing and called the company from Sweden instead, getting a distribution deal and my first Qube.<br><br>Anyway, many Qubes, RaQs and years later I'm still here. <br><br>When they closed the Cobalt office in Amsterdam, they sent the rest of the old stuff and repair kits to me in Stockholm. <br><br>I made an WiFi AP of the qube2, and numerous SSL packages for qubes and raqs, until they could implement it as standard with the raq3/4...<br><br>All in all I think we sold around 600 Cobalts from 1999-2002 in Sweden not selling more than 5 to any one customer. No big hosting partners and only through the channel, resellers. But a lot of custom machines. Extra disks, raids, larger disks, more memory and custom packages. It was fun... :-) <br><br>And very stylish! :-) <br><br>BTW, In one conference about 2001 I saw a sales/support presentation where they broke down sales figures and support calls to every country in EMEA. I had sold 99% of all servers in Sweden in 2000, a few hundred and there was only 1 support call from Sweden, not from me though... I actually got a glass-plaque at the diner. Well, my partner in Denmark also got one, for other reasons.<br><br>Ahh... Memories. :-) <br><br><br>Sorry for taking up your time.<br><br>Best regards,<br>Rickard<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">Michael Stauber <<a href="mailto:mstauber@blueonyx.it" target="_blank">mstauber@blueonyx.it</a>> skrev: (15 december 2020 00:43:17 CET)<blockquote type="cite" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:2px #729fcf solid;padding-left:1ex">
<pre>Hi Chris,</pre><br><br><blockquote type="cite" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:2px #729fcf solid;padding-left:1ex"><pre>We have kept a collection of stuff over the years, and finally decided</pre><br><pre>to start unboxing all the old stuff and put it on display. Customers</pre><br><pre>enjoy seeing it.</pre><br></blockquote><br><pre>I can imagine.</pre><br><br><blockquote type="cite" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:2px #729fcf solid;padding-left:1ex"><pre>I was never aware of the Cobalt Control Station when it was out, though</pre><br><pre>maybe we never operated the machines at a scale that it would have made</pre><br><pre>sense. Seems like a really cool gadget, though and especially if</pre><br><pre>you're managing a bunch of them.</pre><br></blockquote><br><pre>Yeah, the ControlStation was kinda nice. It had a custom tailored RaQ550</pre><br><pre>GUI that had the Vsite hosting bits stripped and instead the management</pre><br><pre>features added. It basically ran a NewLinQ server from which you could</pre><br><pre>distribute PKGs. And on top of that some monitoring stuff with which you</pre><br><pre>could check the state of attached RaQs and Qubes and send alerts on</pre><br><pre>service failures.</pre><br><br><pre>Back in the days I poked through the innards of the ControlStation and</pre><br><pre>found a couple of hair raising security flaws. I don't recall much of</pre><br><pre>the details, but once I had reported them they (mostly) got fixed.</pre><br><pre>Still: The ControlStation was of course a low hanging fruit for</pre><br><pre>exploitation - considering that it could do remote patching and even</pre><br><pre>remote code execution on all attached devices.</pre><br><br><pre>In some parts the CS looked like it had been rushed out of the door and</pre><br><pre>lacked some of the ingenuity and security mindedness that the rest of</pre><br><pre>the stuff had.</pre><br><br><blockquote type="cite" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:2px #729fcf solid;padding-left:1ex"><pre>As for the Qubes, would you believe I've never laid hands on one?</pre><br></blockquote><br><pre>That surprises me. I'd have guessed you at least had one on your desk as</pre><br><pre>toy back in the days. :p</pre><br><br><pre>I had a Qube3 and Qube4, but I didn't do much with them aside from</pre><br><pre>rolling up packages and playing around a little.</pre><br><br><blockquote type="cite" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:2px #729fcf solid;padding-left:1ex"><pre>Sometimes I wonder if in an alternate universe would Cobalt have</pre><br><pre>retooled their product lineup to fit the times and been a player in the</pre><br><pre>space of, say, Synology/Qnap, hybrid cloud, and maybe even some</pre><br><pre>crossover with Ubiquiti. I suppose if that had happened, we wouldn't</pre><br><pre>have anything like BlueOnyx today. We'd have... something else.</pre><br></blockquote><br><pre>Yeah, that would have been interesting, indeed. OTOH: Once they had sold</pre><br><pre>out to Sun whatever creative potential the remainder of the staff had:</pre><br><pre>It wouldn't and couldn't fit into Sun's corporate architecture and had</pre><br><pre>no chance to thrive there. Imagine a big bank buying up a tiny e-payment</pre><br><pre>provider. They get assigned a small broom closet in the basement and</pre><br><pre>eventually someone forgets they're still there and accidentally turns</pre><br><pre>off the lights for good.</pre><br></blockquote></div><br><pre>_______________________________________________</pre><pre>Blueonyx mailing list</pre><a href="mailto:Blueonyx@mail.blueonyx.it"><pre>Blueonyx@mail.blueonyx.it</pre></a><pre><br></pre><a href="http://mail.blueonyx.it/mailman/listinfo/blueonyx"><pre>http://mail.blueonyx.it/mailman/listinfo/blueonyx</pre></a><pre><br></pre></div></blockquote></div></blockquote><div><span><pre>-- <br></pre><div>Bluapp AB</div><div>Rickard Osser</div><div>CTO</div><div>Solberga Ängsväg 3</div><div>125 44 Älvsjö</div><div>Sweden</div><div><br></div><div>Web: <a href="http://www.bluapp.com">http://www.bluapp.com</a></div><div>Mail: <a href="mailto:rickard.osser@bluapp.com">rickard.osser@bluapp.com</a></div></span></div></body></html>