[rescue] I'm one happy geek

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Mon, 25 Jun 2001, Brian Hechinger wrote:

> my sparc20 only has 2 serial ports, which kinda sucks, but it's real easy to
> get a large number of serial ports on my VAXentoys.  although that isn't real
> useful for the type of stuff you need to do, but then, we have different needs.

Actually, if you run unix on the vaxen, then you probably could use it for
the serial consoles, printer, camera and palm.  I don't have any vaxen,
and I don't keep my extra unix machines on all the time, so I'd have to
wait for a SS2 to boot if I wanted to use's it's two serial ports, which
is further cut down since one of those two is used as the console.
 
> yeah, but since it's so easy to find what you are looking for in native USB, 
> that shouldn't be a problem, right?

Only if I don't want to save money by not upgrading.  USB wacom tablets
aren't that cheap, nor are USB lasers.  One of these days I'll by a
USB->Serial port adapter and see if they live up as claimed when working
with my devices. 

> MFM/ESDI can both be a giant PITA, no, s/can be/are/ but they are what you
> usually find on older boxes.  both of my PDP machines have MFM and my IBM RTs
> both have ESDI disks.  both are a PITA to find as well, so once these die,
> i'm pretty much up shit creek without a paddle.

Isn't it possible to use a SCSI->ESDI board?  Or does that only work for
hooking ESDI drives to SCSI controllers?
 
> either way, you can't beat IDE for the price per MB.  performance isn't so
> shabby anymore these days, but reliability isn't good from what i hear, and
> you are still very limited to number of spindles in a machine.  not a big deal
> for your average desktop box, but that's not what i specialize in. :)

There are hot-swapable IDE Raids out there.   They are expensive though.
I don't see them around much, but when I do, they are usually being
pitched to SGI owners (cheap video storage).  I'd love to pick one of
those up.  Then, I get less downtime while still being able to get the
cheap drives.
 
> 3D acceleration?  uhm, what's that? :)

That thing you get with a zx board for your SS20, or some other board for
the Dec 3000.  The accelerator for the Dec 3000 actually wasn't supposed
to be half bad.  But, it is only supported by Dunix, and it didn't support
OpenGL. 
 
> i use the onboard SX, a GX and a TGX.  i don't think any of them even know how
> to spell matrices, let alone transform them. :)

That's fine, since most of the Matrix work in PC land happens in the CPU,
unless you are using OpenGL capable software and a Geforce or Radeon card.
And I don't think that hardware transformations are supported under linux
with those cards.
 
> render video frames faster? my SX can barely keep it's head above water. :)

Time to get the landlord to pump the extra water out of you house then.
It's not good to have water near computers, but water near the monitors is
especially bad. :)

--
Joshua Boyd