[rescue] Resurrecting an IBM RS/6000 model 590

[Dave McGuire]

On Feb 17, 2004, at 3:12 AM, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
>> Thankfully I still keep in touch with some of my mentors, I love 
>> spending
>> time with old school computer architects. Most American kids are too
>> interested in making the quick bucks and are not willing to hear the
>> lessons some of these magnificent American engineers have to share.
>
> People like that piss me off beyond belief.  What we do is beyond
> engineering, almost to the point of art, and occasionally into the
> realms of black magic.  People who see an industry with so much soul an
> history as purely a profit center just make my blood run cold.

   Management types.

   I think I may have mentioned this before...but in an article in 
BusinessWeek last year (no I don't read that suit dreck, an 
acquaintance of mine showed it to me) about outsourcing to India, our 
work was described as "mind-numbing digital toil".

   I saw red for hours.  The tie-wearing MORONS who can barely wipe 
their own asses by themselves simply don't have the mental capacity to 
understand anything other than golf, management hair, power ties, 
stealing money, and destroying companies.

   But yes, SO much has been lost, or is being lost, in terms of 
architectural knowledge.  That's why I buy up all the old (*old*...like 
1950s) computer architecture books that I can find, to try to glean 
some perspective.  Unlike now when it's old hat, back in those days the 
*smartest people on the planet* worked on developing computers.  It was 
THE big thing.  What they did is still very relevant today, lest we 
continue the habit of reinventing the wheel and patting ourselves on 
the back for our "new" ideas.

        -Dave

--
Dave McGuire                      "My tummy hurts now, but my soul
Cape Coral, FL                   feels a little better."     -Ed