[rescue] Production uses for rescued hardware

[Frank Van Damme]

On Thursday 16 January 2003 19:37, Skeezics Boondoggle wrote:
> For other Rescuers, what's the main application for your older gear?
> Personal use?  Historical interest only?  I know that some of you still
> use older machines to earn a living or run a business, and still rely on
> used gear in a production role of some kind.  I'm curious to know what
> sort of interesting uses people get out of the "obsolete" hardware they
> collect.

Yo, as a 21-year young geek I'd say: interest in nifty stuff and something 
to brag about at the lug meetings. A sparc station 2 isn't that useable 
anymore these days (even if it has 3 gigs of storage and 64 ram the cpu is 
a PITA). I run Apache on it however, and it acts as my news cache. If I 
have time I'll also make it my IMAP server. Anything that the still-ok IO 
capacity that Sun hardware is notorious for can benefit from :)

About my other box... a sparcbook. I didn't get it to work yet. I hope it 
works 'cause it looks like someone rescued it from a dumpster. I found a 
1.2 gig drive for it (thanks to the guys on #arc on Freenode.net). Someone 
offered me a drive some while ago here, but this one is bigger ;-) . 

I allready have some things in mind about what to do with it. Besides the 
fact that I'm pretty sure no one in a 50 km radius has such a computer 
(it's an rdi powerlite, 110 MHz, 32 megs ram, and currently no HD) and it 
is extremely cool, it is also very useful. It ain't got an intel cpu so 
this guarantees no moron will ever install windows on it, which in turn 
guarantees a productivity boost to me. I'll leave any sort of X server at 
home and try to go for the linux framebuffer driver. I don't want it to eat 
half of the mem in the first place. Gtk is ported to that thing so approx. 
half of my favorite apps will run *g*. I wonder if this beast (it looks 
heavier then it is, it's about 7 cm thick I guess) is still capable of 
doing transparant windows :-)

So, no, I don't sigh because I have to go and sit behind my leetest boxen to 
put bread on the table. My parents do that :-)

-- 
Frank