Celestix
Aries

The Celestix Aries is one of the smallest all in one servers I have ever seen. It can serve up web pages, as well as function as a mail, ftp, DNS and print server.

The Aries has a full compliment of plugs including standard VGA and keyboard plugs. There are also two USB and two PCMCIA card slots along with dual ethernet ports. One thing about the ethernet ports, one is primary and one secondary so you have to be careful which port you use with your network.

Opening the Aries is pretty straightforward, you have to gently release clips on the top and bottom of the cases, then pop off the front faceplate which is also held on with plastic clips. Do not press to hard on these clips as they will snap off easily.

In order to access the two memory slots in the Aries you need to remove the top motherboard which is held on in the corners by phillips head screws.

My Aries shipped with this Fujitsu 18GB hard drive which was preloaded with all the software required to operate all it's services.

Rear of the front faceplate with the ribbon connector to the LCD panel. The Aries also has an infrared port at the bottom of the fron

Accessing the Aries BIOS is pretty straight forward just hit F1 at startup. Looks just like the BIOS setup of any PC of this era so no surprises here.

Though the 6360 can accept 168 pin 5v dimms this motherboard does not seem to work with 128MB dimms it only sees 128 MB instead of the full 256 MB. The most memory I have been able to run in this Mac is two 64 MB dimms.

My particular Aries came with 128MB of ram, in one slot so I should be able to upgrade to 256MB which seems to be the maximum amount according to websites writing about this server.

Snapshot of the power management setup for the bios.

Shot of the PNP bios setup.

Basically when you turn on the Aries it just boots up and initializes itself the screens above are only available if you boot with a keyboard and monitor attached. This is what you see on the built in LCD screen when the Aries starts up.

If all goes well you will see the server progress through the various services and will be ready to run.

From the main screen you can access the main menu through the four buttons arranged around the edges of the screen.

Clicking on select will bring you into these submenus. To exit this screen hit the button above Back or if you want to select the highlighted item hit the button below Select.

Date and time is the last option on this menu.

This is a neat feature of the Aries.

It can also go wireless, sees my 2Wire aka Orinoco WaveLan Silver Turbo card just fine.

The Aries must be shut down from the menu on the server, there is no other safe way of doing this!

Just say yes to shut down the server.

The Aries is a neat little server even today (2008) though a real challenge to reload the software on!

Comments? Feel free to e-mail me at kevino@newsroom.net.