[rescue] WTB: Good 'antique' computer for education

[Dave McGuire]

On July 26, Eric Hall wrote:
> >   But even worse, I have upwards of THIRTY DECstation-3100 boxes.  And a
> > few DECstation-5000s.  I would like to find new homes for the majority
> > of them.  For the uninitiated, they are early MIPS R2000/R3000 based
> > RISC workstations.  The run Ultrix or NetBSD quite well, and make
> > decent light-duty servers (running headless) or somewhat usable
> > workstations with a bitmapped console.
> > 
> There seem to be a lot of these kicking around. Will they run VMS?
> If so, is getting one up and running as simple as acquiring an OpenVMS
> license and media from Compaq?

  Nope.  VMS only runs on VAXen and Alphas, whereas the DECstation line
is built around MIPS processors.  They're exclusively Unix machines,
and fun ones at that.  The early MIPS processors are an interesting
case study in processor architecture, and fun to learn about.

         -Dave McGuire