[rescue] Free to a good DC area

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sat, 18 Mar 2006, Nick B. wrote:

> As you may or may not be aware the tasks put to computers have
> increased in complexity at a staggering rate since their invention.

That was true at one point in time, but the last few years seems to
mainly be an increase in bloat and feature creep in the name of "user
friendliness".  Strip away all the GUI junk, and many older systems are
just as valid of today's business tasks.  When you get right down to it,
most problems are I/O bound, as we're still stuck with spinning metal
platters.

Assuming that Bill's company needs machines that run IRIX, and the ratio
of the computational throughput of today's IRIX systems to an Origin 200
is much smaller than, a similar comparison within most other
architectures, I'd suspect that an Origin 200 is still a Very Fine
System for development and testing of software that requires IRIX.

> This has caused the creation of a whole market dedicated to faster,
> cheaper, more efficient computers, which do all the tasks older
> systems are capable of, and many more at the same time.  The net
> effect of this is systems age poorly and are quickly rendered obsolete
> by their newer counterparts, who are faster, cheaper and more
> efficient.

It's hard to be cheaper than "free", and while a given device of actual
cost might be faster, it'd have to be a lot more electrically efficient
to beat the bang/buck of yesteryear's equipment at dumpster-dive prices.

> The prices drop so dramatically in fact that there has sprung up a
> whole community devoted to the aquisition and preservation of the
> older computers, so they do not get thrown out and destroyed.

You don't say.  Where might I find such a community, so that I might
become a member?

-- 
Jonathan Patschke    )   "Firefox has its own memory allocator no doubt;
Elgin, TX           (     too bad it doesn't have its own memory
USA                  )    deallocator."                  --James Jonczyk