30 May
2013
30 May
'13
10:19 p.m.
On May 30, 2013, at 1:06 PM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 8:04 PM, Zane H. Healy
<healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote:
Sadly this pretty much parallels where my mind has been going. For the past several years
the only server I've had running is a 12 year old Pentium 3. The VMS servers and Sun
boxes have been powered down. In fact for several years I've threatened to replace
the P3 with an Atom-based server.
Suddenly though I find myself thinking of adding 3+ Linux boxes for a project.
Zane
What good are old UNIX systems? I'm curious,
what are people using things
like Sparc 2's through 20's for?
I used to run Sun gear all the time at home. I just don't power it up
anymore, so
the strict answer to your question is "keeping the shelves from being empty".
At one time, old Sun gear was a great gateway to learning "real" Unix and a
foot
in the door for a "real" job. It's been far, far less true for coming
up on 10 years.
And then, around 4 years ago, give or take, if the job postings said "Solaris
experience required", it was Solaris 10 or nothing, something you can't do
with SPARC hardware from the 1980s.
I've turned down more free Sun hardware in the past 2 years than I've
kept. It's
still elegant, and it still runs DNS and web servers, and plenty of
other things,
but I personally don't care to spend that much on electricity for those sorts
of services at the bandwidths I require - an old laptop running Linux can do
everything I "need" at home in the way of services and suck up 90W or less.
I also have VAXen that I only turn on for special occasions - too hungry to
leave powered on all the time like we used to do back in the day. Of course,
in the winter, it's "electric heat", so no harm there, but it's summer
up here
now, so most of that stuff stays off except for a few hours here and there.
-ethan