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Grex > Agora > #33: Where's Grex's Previous Hardware? | |
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glitch
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Where's Grex's Previous Hardware?
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Jun 5 21:00 UTC 2018 |
Whatever happened to Grex's old Sun hardware? I hack on old systems for fun
and the thought hadn't crossed my mind until the other day, when a friend and
I were talking about the old Sun4 VME Grex (turns our we both had accounts,
but didn't know each other!).
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| 35 responses total. |
cross
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response 1 of 35:
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Jun 6 14:27 UTC 2018 |
That's a good question. I donated several older SPARC systems over
the years; as far as I know, they disappeared into a black hole.
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glitch
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response 2 of 35:
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Jun 8 16:03 UTC 2018 |
I seem to remember participating in a "RAM drive" when Grex was still on sun4
hardware -- 1 MB 30 pin parity SIMMs were needed to fill up another VME memory
board :)
I do a fair bit of work with the Vintage Computer Federation museum at InfoAge
Science Center in New Jersey, they may be interested in the fate of Grex's
old hardware. If not, I'd personally be interested in it, especially as we're
coming up on the 50th anniversary of UNIX and I've been thinking about doing
something related to that for VCF East next year.
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tod
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response 3 of 35:
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Jun 10 18:02 UTC 2018 |
There are probably some old confeerences where you can find out their fate.
I donated an old Sun 3/260 with a bunch of odds and ends like graphic cards
ram cards, CD carousel SCSI etc back in the 90's. When the boxes went
from mini fridge to pizza box there was a big schism which I didn't
participate. Solaris 2 was showing up as backwards compatible on Ultras
but also BSD was catching up.
glitch, have you been to Powells Tech bookstore in Portland, OR? It's a fun
time travel.
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gelinas
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response 4 of 35:
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Jun 15 22:44 UTC 2018 |
Some of it was given away, and some of it was sold. I think some of it went
home with STeve Andre. It's been a long time since I thought about that
hardware.
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tod
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response 5 of 35:
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Jun 16 19:23 UTC 2018 |
re #4
Tube radios grab me more than the first RISC stuff. Lately I've been
playing with old bakelite AM radios. The fickle world of soldering
and tubes.
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walkman
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response 6 of 35:
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Oct 5 15:19 UTC 2018 |
Vintage SPARC machines are pretty cheap on ebay but I bet a raspberry pi
has more horsepower and you can run it with a phone charger.
*snicker*
I once had a SPARCclassic but I donated it to Salvation Army about 15
years ago. It was pretty nifty - maybe a collector item for people who
have space for such things.
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tod
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response 7 of 35:
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Oct 5 17:09 UTC 2018 |
I would like one so I can gut it and make it into a guitar.
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ball
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response 8 of 35:
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Oct 5 20:46 UTC 2018 |
I recycled my SPARCstations but it has been fascinating
to read about the unusual combinations of boards that made
up the sun3 and SPARC hosts for Grex. I get the impression
that some of them would have surprised engineers at Sun.
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tod
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response 9 of 35:
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Oct 6 13:21 UTC 2018 |
When I still had the Sun 3 260, I met a Sun engineer from Cary, NC at
a party in Greenville (ECU). She and I killed a keg together and talked
about the fun of running C on RISC. And about the pain of SCSI vs SCSI-2
with the jeweled CD drives. I used it mostly to heat my apartment in
Plymouth, MI..in the Winter I could crack the window and get just the right
temp in the apartment. Moisture was still and issue though.
Here's a page janc drew up with is very underrated.
https://www.unixpapa.com/grextech/pumpkin97/
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cross
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response 10 of 35:
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Oct 6 13:33 UTC 2018 |
sun3 gear has mostly disappeared from the world; it was MC68k based;
a 3/260 probably had a 68020 in it.
RISC is a good idea. More people should try it. The more people find
strange speculative execution and other bugs in x86, the more I think
we'd be better off with a different archicture overall. Note that
RISC-V is not currently vulnerable to speculative execution attacks,
though in fairness they don't actually have a lot of hardware.
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papa
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response 11 of 35:
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Oct 7 09:40 UTC 2018 |
resp:9 Nice pics from 20 years ago.
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tod
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response 12 of 35:
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Oct 8 23:46 UTC 2018 |
re #10
Correct, 68020. It has 12 VME slots with capacity for 32MB (using 4MB
daughter boards.) The graphics board and the ethernet board were the
most exciting parts, imo. I had to hunt down an RGB converter for the
CRT which itself was almost $100.
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cross
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response 13 of 35:
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Oct 11 13:05 UTC 2018 |
32MB?! Let me put on my copy of "Flip Your Wig" and plug in a
16" black and white CRT.... Stylin'.
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tod
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response 14 of 35:
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Oct 15 16:50 UTC 2018 |
The CRT was as big as Florida
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walkman
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response 15 of 35:
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Oct 18 11:12 UTC 2018 |
#9 I'd that the 1GB drive I ended up with circa 1997? It was monstrous
and ran alarmingly hot.
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tod
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response 16 of 35:
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Oct 20 18:37 UTC 2018 |
re #15
Yes, that drive was worth alot of money to a few eastern euro countries'
agencies, LOL
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mijk
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response 17 of 35:
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Nov 22 08:03 UTC 2018 |
resp:9 I never saw these pictures or read of the pumpkin before.
Awesome! A very good bit of the Grex story, right there, in one page:
with pictures.
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lar
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response 18 of 35:
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Mar 8 20:32 UTC 2020 |
The pic of the pumpkin brings back some memories.My brother introduced me to
grex back in the 90s. I remember that article being put up on the grex website
an couple of years later. My brother passed last december so it brings back
some good memories.
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tod
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response 19 of 35:
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Mar 9 21:24 UTC 2020 |
re #18
Sorry for your loss. Who was your brother?
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walkman
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response 20 of 35:
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Mar 10 14:16 UTC 2020 |
#18 Sorry for your loss lar. :(
Good to see you back posting here BTW.
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lar
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response 21 of 35:
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Mar 10 22:46 UTC 2020 |
My brother was on here as user "tinman" from 96 to 99. He didn't post much
but was in party quite a bit. I had my first account here in 96. I got it just
after I configured my first PPP connection at 14k. Win96 was out but I was
still running win 3.1 on my PC. That OS didn't come with a tcp/ip stack so
I had to download one called "trumpet"(I think) from my ISP and install it.
MAN...I thought I was "leet" because all my friends had was AOL or Compuserv.
I eventually got to the point where I could configure a PPP connection on
AOL's backend and bybass their sodtware garbage. Everyone thought I was so
cool...and I was until I ran into the *nix bunch on m-net and grex. To them
I was a total lamer.....windows user...strickly from commerical (Frank Zappa)
LOL!.
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tod
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response 22 of 35:
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Mar 11 13:30 UTC 2020 |
re #21
Seems like yesterday
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walkman
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response 23 of 35:
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Mar 11 14:44 UTC 2020 |
OS/2 had it's own TCP/IP configuration built in rather than relying on
a 3rd party like windows 3.11.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ1AjaNjack
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tod
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response 24 of 35:
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Mar 12 20:31 UTC 2020 |
I disdain the day that DOS 6.22 introduced the MS TCP/IP stack driver.
LAN Workplace and Wollongong 3rd party stack drivers were benign.
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