9 ms·

The virtue of reusing an old system is somewhat eroded by the fact that its noise and power consumption exceed that of a more powerful Pi 3 B+, which can be had

by aksss 6y ago

The virtue of reusing an old system is somewhat eroded by the fact that its noise and power consumption exceed that of a more powerful Pi 3 B+, which can be had for $50-60 with case and power supply (circa 2020). I see little advantage in keeping the old hardware around anymore. I think I still have some old ISA cables downstairs in a box - high time to acknowledge to myself that I will NEVER use those again.

cellularmitosis 6y ago
I find the most useful application of old hardware is to occasionally re-ground your perspective on code performance and resource utilization. Writing software for old hardware is an effective way to force yourself to write performant code, even if only as a rare weekend exercise :)
- russdill 6y ago
  You can get all that from using an AT-tiny :)
SillaDeRuedas 6y ago
But then you wouldn't show up in HN's frontpage doing something completely meaningless.
- rpeden 6y ago
  Sometimes fun is the only meaning you need! I think this is definitely in keeping with the hacker spirit and belongs on the front page for that reason alone.
  - aksss 6y ago
    For the record, I fully support this attitude to life. Doing it for its own sake is totally a virtuous pursuit.
reaperducer 6y ago
I guess it depends on if noise and power are your primary considerations. For some, they'd rather not see a useful machine take up space in a landfill, leech toxins into the environment, and simultaneously drive unneeded demand for the production of yet another computer. I guess one would have to do the math and figure out what the environmental impact of a new Pi 3 B+ is. Or they could figure out if the increased electrical cost of running an old machine over x number of years is greater than the expense of purchasing and powering a new Pi 3 B+. Where I live, I could run a 486 for a heck of a long time on $60, especially when you factor in that the Pi still needs to be powered, too.
- aksss 6y ago
  I fully empathize with this - I hate throwing out/recycling electronics. The power side it truly does depend on your local rates of course. If you consider a 24/7 draw of about 35 watts to power an out-of-box 486 DX2 (headless) vs like 3 watts for an RPI, you can do the math with some variance and figure out just how long the $60 will last you. But a 10-fold reduction in power consumption is pretty remarkable. When you consider that an RPI might replace multiple 486's, even more so. Alternative uses for a 486 case - make a planter box, bird house or a bee hive. https://www.instructables.com/id/Computer-case-beehive/ https://www.instructables.com/id/Computer-case-beehive/ Alternative uses for 486 mobo - incorporate it into furniture design, cut it up to create a wind chime, create stuff like that to avoid the landfill. :)
  - cellularmitosis 6y ago
    There's also the environmental impact of the energy use. That 486 is pumping out 10x the greenhouse gasses.
    - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
      Not really. 10x per MIPS, otherwise 486 CPU consumes about same number of watts. The whole PC though...
      - 6y ago
cosmotic 6y ago
AFAIK You can't hook up old ISA or PCI cards to a raspberry pi, and if you can, the x86 drivers and software won't work.
- aksss 6y ago
  For the record... sure you can!! :D An ISA/IDE cable is just copper ribbon cable using .1" spacing, which is what the GPIO header pin spacing is on a Pi. There is a pin blocked on the standard ide female connector but that pin is just one of many ground connectors on the Pi. Clip it off or dremel/drill out the hole as needed. Jeez, now I just convinced myself that I MIGHT use the cable some day. Thanks a lot! >:/ Was trying to throw it away. There's a PCI bridge for the raspberry pi 4, if for whatever reason one would want to do such a thing. Drivers might be a problem if the card's linux support sucks but that's kind of a separate issue. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-4-pci-express-bridge-is-a-step-closer https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-4-pci-express... EDIT: Oh, maybe your point was that the reason to keep the 486 around is to use old ISA/PCI cards - sorry, I mentioned ISA cables in OC so thought you were replying to that. Yeah, point taken, but I'm skeptical that there are any but the most narrow cases where the function of an old ISA/PCI card can't be replicated/emulated with better performance on a Pi. I mean, trying to think of the edge cases - an old SCSI RAID controller? Maybe some proprietary industrial controller stuff? but yeah. My comment about junking the old stuff was just a criticism of the inclination I think all of us nerds have to get that old box back into production use at home. I think there are very few - if any - cases where that makes sense anymore.
  - kjs3 6y ago
    What is this "ISA cable" thing you keep talking about? You mean an IDE cable? ISA is a bus, not a cable. I have all sorts of ISA cards that have no alternative (other than for huge expense) or software. Quite a few IEEE-488, many other weird interfaces, DSP dev boards, one of a kind/prototype boards, other stuff. I have boxes of the stuff, and know hundreds of people who have the same needs. We have mailing lists. No, a PI can't do that. No it can't emulate that. No it's not as generally useful as you think unless all you care about is stuff written in the last 5 years.
fsociety 6y ago
It’s more like art than an engineering accomplishment
6510 6y ago
You should develop the creativity to do something completely useless with everything. https://inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2018/12/cables-889x592.jpg https://inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2018/12/c...
- sosuke 6y ago
  If you enjoy circuit board art I saw this artist year after year in the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. https://www.armadillobazaar.com/austin-circuit-board-2015-2/ https://www.armadillobazaar.com/austin-circuit-board-2015-2/
  - nessunodoro 6y ago
    Artist John Zaklikowski had a great exhibit called Hard Drive Universe in 2012 in SF https://www.flickr.com/photos/schill/albums/72157629355171334/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/schill/albums/7215762935517133...
userbinator 6y ago
The Pi is also notoriously Broadcom-proprietary[1], whereas an x86 PC has been a de-facto standard for decades; everything is well-known or has been reverse-engineered already, especially with a 486-era system. It's somewhat similar to the reason people (like me) restore and drive old cars, also despite the "noise and power consumption" (and some happen to like the former ;-) --- they're relatively simple and well-understood. Likewise, there is also a very active retrocomputing community, although a lot of it goes back much older than 486 or even PC --- the C64, ZX, and the like continue to have plenty of new software written for them. [1] and if you ask for a datasheet or any more details about it on their "excellent community" (to quote some), you basically get told politely to f'off: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=163420 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=163420
- aswanson 6y ago
  Broadcom is horrible with datasheets. If you're not apple or intel, an f off should be expected in any request for a datasheet from them.
  - ifmpx 6y ago
    At work, we briefly considered deploying a fleet of raspberry pis as cheep ARM servers. We ordered an initial batch for evaluation, but then quickly realized just how little technical information Broadcom and the Raspberry Pi Foundation are willing to make available to their users. They were tight-lipped even with the bare minimums. We ended up abandoning the idea soon after. Unless these companies manage to break away from their bad habits, I can't see ARM servers gaining any sort of market share outside of big companies.
    - aksss 6y ago
      Are you able to expand a bit on what info you were looking for? I had been considering using the Compute Module for a more "commercial" application of the Pi, and we use them periodically almost like an IoT event hub at work, so kind of curious what your roadblocks were for adoption. I probably won't have any solutions, just curious what you were dealing with.
happycube 6y ago
Another good cheap option if the Pi doesn't suit you is an up-cycled thin client - some HP T620 configs (quad AMD Jaguar, 4GB RAM, 16GB flash) are <=$55 on eBay US w/PSU. (There's also the T620 Pro, but those are going for a bit more these days since they make good home routers when you add a quad gig-e card...)
- coolreader18 6y ago
  You can also always just find an old desktop box and install a lightweight distro on it -- my grandpa got a new computer a year or so ago so I took his ~10 year old HP box, wiped it, and installed alpine. Now I have it just plugged into my router and I have a few cron jobs and docker services that I run on it.
  - happycube 6y ago
    That too. Then again I'm old enough that seven year old computers should be ancient, but with a good video card and enough RAM/SSD they still do almost any job.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  I happened to have received a small pile of that exact piece of kit a while back. It is easily capable of running a full desktop OS and playing older games. Absolutely ridiculous specs for a thin client.

by aksss 6y ago

cellularmitosis 6y ago

I find the most useful application of old hardware is to occasionally re-ground your perspective on code performance and resource utilization. Writing software for old hardware is an effective way to force yourself to write performant code, even if only as a rare weekend exercise :)

russdill 6y ago
You can get all that from using an AT-tiny :)

SillaDeRuedas 6y ago

But then you wouldn't show up in HN's frontpage doing something completely meaningless.

rpeden 6y ago
Sometimes fun is the only meaning you need! I think this is definitely in keeping with the hacker spirit and belongs on the front page for that reason alone.
- aksss 6y ago
  For the record, I fully support this attitude to life. Doing it for its own sake is totally a virtuous pursuit.

reaperducer 6y ago

I guess it depends on if noise and power are your primary considerations. For some, they'd rather not see a useful machine take up space in a landfill, leech toxins into the environment, and simultaneously drive unneeded demand for the production of yet another computer. I guess one would have to do the math and figure out what the environmental impact of a new Pi 3 B+ is. Or they could figure out if the increased electrical cost of running an old machine over x number of years is greater than the expense of purchasing and powering a new Pi 3 B+. Where I live, I could run a 486 for a heck of a long time on $60, especially when you factor in that the Pi still needs to be powered, too.

aksss 6y ago
I fully empathize with this - I hate throwing out/recycling electronics. The power side it truly does depend on your local rates of course. If you consider a 24/7 draw of about 35 watts to power an out-of-box 486 DX2 (headless) vs like 3 watts for an RPI, you can do the math with some variance and figure out just how long the $60 will last you. But a 10-fold reduction in power consumption is pretty remarkable. When you consider that an RPI might replace multiple 486's, even more so. Alternative uses for a 486 case - make a planter box, bird house or a bee hive. https://www.instructables.com/id/Computer-case-beehive/ https://www.instructables.com/id/Computer-case-beehive/ Alternative uses for 486 mobo - incorporate it into furniture design, cut it up to create a wind chime, create stuff like that to avoid the landfill. :)
- cellularmitosis 6y ago
  There's also the environmental impact of the energy use. That 486 is pumping out 10x the greenhouse gasses.
  - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
    Not really. 10x per MIPS, otherwise 486 CPU consumes about same number of watts. The whole PC though...
    - 6y ago

cosmotic 6y ago

AFAIK You can't hook up old ISA or PCI cards to a raspberry pi, and if you can, the x86 drivers and software won't work.

aksss 6y ago
For the record... sure you can!! :D An ISA/IDE cable is just copper ribbon cable using .1" spacing, which is what the GPIO header pin spacing is on a Pi. There is a pin blocked on the standard ide female connector but that pin is just one of many ground connectors on the Pi. Clip it off or dremel/drill out the hole as needed. Jeez, now I just convinced myself that I MIGHT use the cable some day. Thanks a lot! >:/ Was trying to throw it away. There's a PCI bridge for the raspberry pi 4, if for whatever reason one would want to do such a thing. Drivers might be a problem if the card's linux support sucks but that's kind of a separate issue. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-4-pci-express-bridge-is-a-step-closer https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-4-pci-express... EDIT: Oh, maybe your point was that the reason to keep the 486 around is to use old ISA/PCI cards - sorry, I mentioned ISA cables in OC so thought you were replying to that. Yeah, point taken, but I'm skeptical that there are any but the most narrow cases where the function of an old ISA/PCI card can't be replicated/emulated with better performance on a Pi. I mean, trying to think of the edge cases - an old SCSI RAID controller? Maybe some proprietary industrial controller stuff? but yeah. My comment about junking the old stuff was just a criticism of the inclination I think all of us nerds have to get that old box back into production use at home. I think there are very few - if any - cases where that makes sense anymore.
- kjs3 6y ago
  What is this "ISA cable" thing you keep talking about? You mean an IDE cable? ISA is a bus, not a cable. I have all sorts of ISA cards that have no alternative (other than for huge expense) or software. Quite a few IEEE-488, many other weird interfaces, DSP dev boards, one of a kind/prototype boards, other stuff. I have boxes of the stuff, and know hundreds of people who have the same needs. We have mailing lists. No, a PI can't do that. No it can't emulate that. No it's not as generally useful as you think unless all you care about is stuff written in the last 5 years.

fsociety 6y ago

It’s more like art than an engineering accomplishment

6510 6y ago

You should develop the creativity to do something completely useless with everything. https://inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2018/12/cables-889x592.jpg https://inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2018/12/c...

sosuke 6y ago
If you enjoy circuit board art I saw this artist year after year in the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. https://www.armadillobazaar.com/austin-circuit-board-2015-2/ https://www.armadillobazaar.com/austin-circuit-board-2015-2/
- nessunodoro 6y ago
  Artist John Zaklikowski had a great exhibit called Hard Drive Universe in 2012 in SF https://www.flickr.com/photos/schill/albums/72157629355171334/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/schill/albums/7215762935517133...

userbinator 6y ago

The Pi is also notoriously Broadcom-proprietary[1], whereas an x86 PC has been a de-facto standard for decades; everything is well-known or has been reverse-engineered already, especially with a 486-era system. It's somewhat similar to the reason people (like me) restore and drive old cars, also despite the "noise and power consumption" (and some happen to like the former ;-) --- they're relatively simple and well-understood. Likewise, there is also a very active retrocomputing community, although a lot of it goes back much older than 486 or even PC --- the C64, ZX, and the like continue to have plenty of new software written for them. [1] and if you ask for a datasheet or any more details about it on their "excellent community" (to quote some), you basically get told politely to f'off: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=163420 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=163420

aswanson 6y ago
Broadcom is horrible with datasheets. If you're not apple or intel, an f off should be expected in any request for a datasheet from them.
- ifmpx 6y ago
  At work, we briefly considered deploying a fleet of raspberry pis as cheep ARM servers. We ordered an initial batch for evaluation, but then quickly realized just how little technical information Broadcom and the Raspberry Pi Foundation are willing to make available to their users. They were tight-lipped even with the bare minimums. We ended up abandoning the idea soon after. Unless these companies manage to break away from their bad habits, I can't see ARM servers gaining any sort of market share outside of big companies.
  - aksss 6y ago
    Are you able to expand a bit on what info you were looking for? I had been considering using the Compute Module for a more "commercial" application of the Pi, and we use them periodically almost like an IoT event hub at work, so kind of curious what your roadblocks were for adoption. I probably won't have any solutions, just curious what you were dealing with.

happycube 6y ago

Another good cheap option if the Pi doesn't suit you is an up-cycled thin client - some HP T620 configs (quad AMD Jaguar, 4GB RAM, 16GB flash) are <=$55 on eBay US w/PSU. (There's also the T620 Pro, but those are going for a bit more these days since they make good home routers when you add a quad gig-e card...)

coolreader18 6y ago
You can also always just find an old desktop box and install a lightweight distro on it -- my grandpa got a new computer a year or so ago so I took his ~10 year old HP box, wiped it, and installed alpine. Now I have it just plugged into my router and I have a few cron jobs and docker services that I run on it.
- happycube 6y ago
  That too. Then again I'm old enough that seven year old computers should be ancient, but with a good video card and enough RAM/SSD they still do almost any job.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
I happened to have received a small pile of that exact piece of kit a while back. It is easily capable of running a full desktop OS and playing older games. Absolutely ridiculous specs for a thin client.