At 11:08 AM -0700 6/22/08, Eric Smith wrote: Realistically "common as dirt" doesn't sound very accurate to me. I've only ever seen one Sun 3 system, and that was one being used by the Navy back in '92. This might be something like someone from near one of the old DEC sites saying PDT-11's (note I said PDT, not PDP) are common as dirt. Remember commonality can be location based. Having said that, this does remind me of people posting they want to buy a Nikon D300 for only $1300 on Craigslist. At face value, it is crazy, but possible, as I saw a posting for someone wanting to sell one and a bunch of new lenses for close to that (some people buy a camera like that and then realize it is too much for them). Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 07:36:33AM -0700, Lyle Bickley wrote: In Ohio, where I am when I'm not here, Sun gear isn't quite as common as mud, but it's usually pretty easy to find Sun gear that's past its prime (no pun intended) at the local Uni surplus. At one point a few years back (2001?), they had pallets of SPARC-LX boxes - most needed to have the EEPROM password cleared (they were set up to netboot, then locked), but there are instructions on the 'net for how to spoof the boot process, and once you can get to a Solaris prompt as root, it's trivial to clear it. Before that, we also had a company in the area that used to upgrade local Sun customers in huge swaths. They took the customers' older machines in trade and resold them retail. I scored my first SPARC1 that way - it was diskless (they'd bundled working disks with packages that were too expensive for me) and had about 25% of a full boat of RAM. It cost as much as my Amiga 1000, but it was a SPARCstation and it was a great learning experience (and responsible for helping me land several excellent jobs, including my first trip to the Pole). Sun stuff is definitely out there, but even so, I wouldn't call pre-SPARC Sun gear common in my area. A while back, though, I did manage to score a Sun 3/60 as it was hitting the dumpster, something I wouldn't expect to see these days. That is an excellent Sun-focused list that I (and I think others here as well) have been a member of for years. Lots of really knowlegeble folks and some pretty good free-for-pickup or inexpensive deals on a regular basis. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 24-Jun-2008 at 16:00 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -85.2 F (-65.1 C) Windchill -116.0 F (-82.2 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 6.2 kts Grid 49 Barometer 678.3 mb (10692 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html