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And if it gets popular, the price of old Xeon workstations will go through the roof, just like old stereos did. Used to be able to get an old Marantz 2220B for

And if it gets popular, the price of old Xeon workstations will go through the roof, just like old stereos did. Used to be able to get an old Marantz 2220B for $100 on the bay. Now they are unobtainium or $850, as an example. I think the same thing happened to old Sun workstations. We used to reuse them a LOT. Could get an ultra 2 decked out for like $200. Now, $800-$1000 with less CPU and ram than a few years back. Could be supply and demand, but it seems to happen a lot. People go "hey, that stuff was great, lets use it again" and the price skyrockets, then the people all go "hey, that old stuffs too expensive". :)

fmajid 4y ago
It may be companies needing to run legacy software on Solaris versions not supported on more recent hardware.
danachow 4y ago
> unobtainium or $850 In fairness the Marantz is being purchased for a collector’s aesthetic - not just for a “value” PC which is the whole point of the old Xeon - the price rise is limited by this elasticity in demand. And $850 I think is illustrative - that’s not unobtanium for middle class - it’s just happen to be a bit beyond what most people spend on a side hobby. Similarly old Sun hardware either you’re screwed with a backward compat issue or again collecting since they are now vintage. x86 doesn’t have the former effect for the most part.
- readingnews 4y ago
  I mean ubobtainium in that at one point they were everywhere on ebay, and now its once in a blue moon. Much like some Xeons the poster is talking about. I remember when supermicro computers, outfitted, were everywhere and cheap. Now, not as prevalent as before. I get it with the Sun, but the same thing will eventually happen with Xeon for example. We will reach a point where those CPUs with that socket and SCSI / SAS connectors and drives are dang hard to find, or no one makes ram any longer, etc.

fmajid 4y ago

It may be companies needing to run legacy software on Solaris versions not supported on more recent hardware.

danachow 4y ago

> unobtainium or $850 In fairness the Marantz is being purchased for a collector’s aesthetic - not just for a “value” PC which is the whole point of the old Xeon - the price rise is limited by this elasticity in demand. And $850 I think is illustrative - that’s not unobtanium for middle class - it’s just happen to be a bit beyond what most people spend on a side hobby. Similarly old Sun hardware either you’re screwed with a backward compat issue or again collecting since they are now vintage. x86 doesn’t have the former effect for the most part.

readingnews 4y ago
I mean ubobtainium in that at one point they were everywhere on ebay, and now its once in a blue moon. Much like some Xeons the poster is talking about. I remember when supermicro computers, outfitted, were everywhere and cheap. Now, not as prevalent as before. I get it with the Sun, but the same thing will eventually happen with Xeon for example. We will reach a point where those CPUs with that socket and SCSI / SAS connectors and drives are dang hard to find, or no one makes ram any longer, etc.