[rescue] long shot... anybody got a Gateway 486?

[JP Hindin]

(I've put a bunch of replies in here, to tighten up mail noise)

On Tue, 30 Apr 2013, Toby Thain wrote:
> On 30/04/13 10:34 AM, JP Hindin wrote:
> > On Tue, 30 Apr 2013, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> >> Most-expensive-when-new machine I've personally owned:  Sun Ultra
> >> Enterprise 3000.
> >
> > Oooh, I like this game. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely positive what
> > original costs were on things, but -
> > - Stacked Sun E10000 with 64x 466mHz processors and 64GB of RAM.
> > - IBM SP/2 with 64 processors (I forget how fast) and 56GB of RAM.
> > - nCUBE2 with 64 processors.
> > - I also have a six-rack Onyx2 system. I think those are the big dogs.
> >
> > Oh, I have an IBM S/34 that was sold, second hand, in 1978 for $188k - I
> > have the sales receipt.
>
> Wow, what an extraordinary collection? Why don't you post here more
> often? And pics?? :)

My practically biological need to collect things outstrips my time to work
on them. I have two children, and a wife to go with (or is that the other
way 'round?) and I also have a couple of cars I fiddle with ('70 UK import
Ford Capri, a DeLorean, '54 Mercedes Benx 220S)... so I have precious
little time to geek, unfortunately. I also try to maintain a geekery
related YouTube channel, which is a time soak, even at one video a month.

I have some pictures of the shed ("Geek Palace") from May of 2011, which
is out of date only in the place is much more messy now, and the E10k
isn't there yet. http://kiwigeek.com/cgi-bin/jpgal?s=g&nd=GeekPala-May2011
My SP/2 actually lives in my office in town (I converted an old apartment
into an office) because I didn't have anywhere else to put it at the
time... and it was such a PIG to move an empty 600lbs rack up two flights
of stairs that I really, really, really am not looking forward to taking
it back out.

I heard some scuttlebutt that the fully stacked, fully licenced E10ks were
on the order of ~$10m in 2002 when they started getting the 466mHz
processors, but that may not be accurate. I'm fairly certain it's still
the most expensive machine I have, originally.

The nCUBE2 has a little battle damage. The previous owner took it to a
basement and it slipped going down the stairs. Internally it's in good
shape and I've powered it up without smoke and clean voltages, but all of
the buttons on it are broken off - I don't actually know what they do. I
have the host processor with software and interface card (a Sun 4/470 in
this unit's case), but until recently had absolutly no idea how to even
talk to the nCUBE. A helpful chap posted simultaneously to my YouTube
channel and classiccmp a bunch of documentation from a Russian university,
so I'm trying to find time to pull them back out - reverify its in working
state - and see if I can talk to it.

Enjoy the day, chaps;

 - JP