Re: [PLUG] Linux for SPARC?

[Magnus <chrish@trilug.org>]

On Wednesday, June 25, 2003, at 03:32 PM, Bob Schwier wrote:

> agreed.
> I have been wasting time getting the first machine I actually 
> purchased to
> work on the web lately.  An Acer 915 - 80286.  I admit it was just for 
> s
> and g.  It is doable.

IMHO the 386DX was the first useful Intel processor.  That's where they 
had all the multitasking bits enabled (it was supposed to be there in 
the 286 but they hadn't quite worked it out in time) and the MMU.  I 
wasn't able to effectively run multiline on my BBS until the 386 came 
out (and networking hardware wasn't within a mortal's reach so 
dedicating 1:1 node/line ratio was not doable).

But for the record, I turn away anything older than a Pentium ~100MHz 
(my yardstick being as arbitrary as what is the slowest thing I can 
play MP3's on usefully).

It's not that older machines are useless, but if you don't have a 
yardstick you will be literally swimming in old computers.  My basement 
was filled four feet deep with computers before I moved back to PA and 
that was about 1000 square feet of computers (with narrow pathways 
every other row).  Once word gets out that you're a collector somehow 
this stuff seems to find you.

FWIW, the biggest booty I came into was a school district that thought 
Pentium 133's were useless.  I scored a whole tractor trailer load of 
PC's & Macs for the grand total of $60 ($10 for one table of stuff at 
auction, and then $50 which was the opening & only bid on  a tractor 
trailer load).

(Jeff, I will get out to you to rescue that old sun, honest, but I keep 
forgetting to grab one of the Dell 1184's on the way out the door)

--

C. Magnus Hedemark
http://trilug.org/~chrish
PGP Key fingerprint = 984D 9A88 3D60 016F BE01 1506 60FB 85E1 9ABD 96F6

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