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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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