Huh? Yeah, well they do. Work with one (or better yet, several) for a few days, and you'll agree. Especially if the machines involved have any combination of the following "features"
Recently, I said that "computers suck" and was jokingly told "oh, so you're a Luddite?" (hehe.. thanks ATN!). No, not really... I'd be out of a job then, wouldn't I? Because computers suck, there is an endless amount of work that needs to be done on them. This keeps people like me employed, and in a sick, perverse way, entertained as well. As I write this, I'm installing Linux on an IBM PS/2 with a 386 processor... now why the hell would anyone do such a thing. Because I can. It is the nasty things listed above that make the job interesting.
As far as I can tell, there are only a few things computers are good for:
These are boxes that are mine, mine, all mine!
| Name | Make/Model | Processor | Memory | Storage | OS | Used for |
| Fragglerock | Abit BP-6 mainboard | Dual Celeron/A, 468MHz | 128MB | 13.5GB IBM Deskstar (UDMA/66) 2.0GB IBM SCSI-2 Plextor 6Plex SCSI-2 CDROM | Windows 2000 | My soon-to-be primary desktop machine at home. Tears through d.net blocks. It's fast. |
| Strangelove | Micron Millenia Pro | Pentium III, 500MHz | 256MB | 13GB WD (UDMA/33) Sony 12x4x2 CDRW | Windows NT 4.0 | The family's machine, for general use. |
| Meltdown | Digital Multia VX40B | Alpha 21068A, 166MHz | 32MB | 1GB Connor CFP-1080S SCSI-2 | Linux (RedHat 6.1, 2.2.14 kernel, tons of patches) | IP Masquerading router/firewall for our cable modem. Some other stuff as I get to it. |
| Quarantine | Micron Millenia (what's left of a very old one) | Pentium, 120MHz | 32MB | 2GB Hewlett-Packard C3010 SCSI-2 400MB IBM SCSI-2 | Linux (RedHat 6.1, kernel 2.2.14) | Runs d.net 24/7. Might become a print server someday. |
| Brick | Texas Instruments 6030 | Pentium, 133MHz | 32MB | 1.3GB IBM Travelstar | Windows 95 (yech!) | My laptop. It sucks compared to what all the freshman around here have, but it was free and it's nicely "kustomised". It's beat up and old but gets you where you want to go. |
| Below here are my machines that live at RPI | ||||||
| Fribble | Digital AlphaStation 4/233 | Alpha 21066, 233MHz | 40MB | 2GB Seagate Hawk SCSI-2 2GB Quantum Fireball IBM CDROM | Linux (RedHat 6.0. kernel 2.2.5) | Email, web, and file server. |
| Toast | Sun SPARCstation IPC | Sparc 4c, 40MHz | 16MB | 669MB and 213MB SCSI | Linux (RedHat 5.2, kernel 2.0.35) | A toy web- and fileserver. |
| Ballast | IBM RS/6000 530 | POWER, 42MHz or so. | 32MB | 2x 600MB SCSI-2 CDROM 8mm tape (5GB) | AIX 4.1 | Conversation piece. Furniture. Runs d.net, albeit poorly. |
| Sulaco | Sun Sparcstation 2 | Sparc 4c, 40MHz | 40MB | 1GB Seagate Hawk SCSI-2 | Solaris 7 | An X-terminal for all the other Linux/Unix machines I have. |
| Bitbucket | IBM PC Server 530 | Dual Pentium, 120MHz | 32 MB | None at the moment. Has on-board Adaptec SCSI-2 and lots of RAID-style disk shelves. :) | Probably Windows NT 4.0. I want OS/2 SMP on it sooo badly though. | A late-night acquisition from the VCC loading dock, this beast of a machine was parted out to nothing. It will take quite a bit of effort to make it usable, but after several hours of tinkering, looks somewhat promising. It's built like a tank, weighs about as much, and looks damn impressive. |
| Below here are RPI machines that I've taken charge of | ||||||
| Nostromo | IBM Intellistation M Pro | Pentium III, 500MHz, dual-cpu capable | 256MB | 9GB IBM Ultrastar U2W SCSI | Windows NT Workstation 4.0 | Day-to-day work for the CHD lab. Layout and design. Fast, with fast disk, fast video, and a kickass monitor, and a slot to make it even faster. |
| Alpha1
Alpha2 Alpha3 | (three) AlphaServer 4000 | dual-cpu Alpha 21164, 366MHz, 4MB cache (!) | 256 MB | 2x 4.0GB Quantum SCSI-2, StorageWORKS rack | Alpha1: Windows NT Terminal Server 4.0
Alpha2: Digital UNIX 4.0c Alpha3: RedHat Linux 6.0 (kernel 2.2.13) | Formally, for research computing (big-ass SPICE jobs) and teaching (CHD lab course). As of late, we're just figuring out the hows and whys of these machines. I'd really rather make one/some of them into genuine servers. A local mirror of every Linux distro would be kewl. These things rock. |
| PXI2 | National Instruments PXI-1000 (w/8154 processor, IIRC) | Pentium/MMX, 233MHz | 32MB | 3GB EIDE | Windows 95B | This little box is the bane of my existance. Well, not really. With some rather evil software in it, we connect it to one of our lab oscilloscopes, and you can operate the scope remotely over the Web. Real nifty when it works. Win95 under heavy load from LabView is less than stable, shall we say? |
| (Unnamed) | IBM PS/2 56SLCs (4, maybe 5 of them) | 386SLC, 20MHz Aww yeah! | Varies from 4MB to 16MB | 160MB SCSI Woohoo! | Linux, one of them at the moment. | These used to be the departments machines, but as they've been replaced, I've accumulated them. Now they'll serve out their lives as cheap network terminals in our Cisco Networking lab. They're not fast enough to be useful as much else, and built far to well to just throw away. And making Linux work on weird Microchannel hardware puts an evil grin on my face. 8^} |
If I thought harder about it, I could add a few more. I'm too lazy to put them up right now.
Here are some computer-related projects I've been working on lately:
RPI Computer Hardware Design (CHD)
Lab
Tons of fun stuff. Well not really, but I'm trying. That's
my job, maybe I should go do it.
CHD Remote Lab AccessAnother fun project of mine, where we make our multi-kilobuck lab instruments Web-acessible for distance learning. If you're lucky, you can go here and play with one of our HP Infinium digital oscilloscopes in real-time. If you're unlucky, somebody else will be using it for a lab, or I've forgot to put it back online.
Networked Multi-Processor SystemI call it
NMP, but you'll call it a Beowulf cluster. I haven't had time to work on
it lately, but it's there, and soooo close to done it drives me nuts. My
way of recycling a pile of old machines into one somewhat faster machine.
That's all for now, more coming as I get to it.
9 Feb 2000