5 Aug
2006
5 Aug
'06
10:35 a.m.
On Saturday 05 August 2006 11:59 am, Ray Arachelian wrote:
Don Y wrote:
Speaking of big old clunky drives, I have a couple of those around here that
I have no use for -- they're 5.25" FH, SCSI, and I'm told around a gig
each. There are some terminators and such on one that aren't on the other,
and of course the jumpering is different (but there _are_ jumpers). Anybody
interested in taking these off my hands? Please? Feel free to contact me
offlist...
Don't confuse consumer "peecees"
with other modern machines.
(what's the MTBF on that 15 year old disk drive from your 386sx??)
Depends on the drive. I've had modern 80GB, and 160GB drives die on me
after only about a year of use (funny how they go just past the
warranty!). These were well taken care of drives. Meanwhile I have
several 5MB 5.25" full height Seagate drives for my Lisa that are nearly
25 years old - and they still work, though they sound like jet engines
when I turn them on. The real problem with ancient x86 hardware is cost per
watt. I don't
mean the CPU, I mean the entire machine. A modern machine runs a lot
more efficiently than an old 386, even though Intel CPU's were until
recently notorious for consuming lots of power. There are very few
things I can't do with a modern machine that I could do with an old 486
or 386 - even if it has to be inside a VM or emulator.
That said, until very recently, I used a Pentium I 100Mhz with 64M of
RAM as a router. Ran beautifully, and it served better as a router than
taking up space in a junk yard.
Indeed. I am currently using (and sending this stuff through) a 486dx2/66 for
a firewall/router. And when I get done with that one for whatever reason I
have plenty more similar hardware to "use up" before I move on to the
Pentium-class hardware, of which I also have plenty.
I replaced this with another aging machine - a PIII
running at 500Mhz,
which only uses 100Watts more - but I can certainly get a lot more out
of it. So that old machine certainly cost me more to run than the new
one in terms of performance for electricity used. I certainly don't
need a 2Ghz AMD64 with 4GB of RAM for use as a router. Today. In 5
years from now, my desktop will be very likely be my router.
A P-III is "an aging machine"? I guess I'm still *way* behind the times,
then... The "workstation" I'm typing this on is a Celeron 366 (though I
have
a few faster boxes on hand that I really do need to get into the picture here
when I can stop *using* it long enough to do some upgrades :-) and the
"server" here is a K6-200...
Got a couple of P-II boards around, but no P-III -- and isn't that the one
where they introduced the processor serial number?
<...>
A few of the ancient x86 line have some historical
value. The 1st IBM
PC, the Jr, the 1st laptops, the 1st portable PC, and so on are
collectibles because they are the 1st of something. But a generic white
box 386, meh.
I still don't intend to throw 'em out until they're all used up. :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin