29 May
2013
29 May
'13
7:11 p.m.
On 05/29/2013 08:04 PM, Zane H. Healy wrote:
I've been working on getting shelving installed in
our Garage, and as a
result, I've been digging back to some systems that have been buried.
Right now I'm moving a bunch of Sun hardware and it hit me. What good
are old UNIX systems? I'm curious, what are people using things like
Sparc 2's through 20's for? Or even Ultra 60's and older?
Pretty much anything they did when they were new, with the exception
of web browsing.
I myself am not running any anymore, as my priorities have shifted a
bit; I'm running modern UNIX machines. But I'd not hesitate to bring
up, say, a DNS server (even a large one) on something like a
SPARCstation-20 or an Ultra60. They're dependable, I know them very
well, and I know I can rely on them.
I will give these machines homes if they show up here. (I have lots
of space, and a love for the hardware)
Part of the
problem I'm looking at is that you can get something like a Raspberry Pi
that will cost a fraction of what a Sun system costs to run.
The Raspberry Pi, while awesome for many reasons, is a fairly wimpy
machine when you come right down to it, CPU-wise. And they seem awfully
fragile, at least compared to non-PeeCee real computers like
SPARCstation-20s or Ultra60s.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA