5 ms·

This seems more about retrocomputing than a history of the lessons of the death of workstations and their vendors. Which is sad, because I think there's a lot t

by mhd 4y ago

This seems more about retrocomputing than a history of the lessons of the death of workstations and their vendors. Which is sad, because I think there's a lot to bring to mind. Although I'd argue that the CDE "collaboration" was mostly vendors giving up hope once they lost to Windows. And hope, as opposed to design skills, is something the OSS sphere has a lot. Interest in old computing stuff stretches from Altairs to Pentium IV gaming rigs. People in a horribly overpaid industry pay good bucks to satisfy their nostalgia.

unixhero 4y ago
Overpaid? Nah... I got all of mine for about 50usd each
lproven 4y ago
[Article author here] > This seems more about retrocomputing than a history of the lessons of the death of workstations and their vendors. Little bit, yes. I highly recommend following the link and reading Holwerda's article which inspired this. HN discussions on that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33948573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33948573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33953816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33953816
Roark66 4y ago
It is not just nostalgia. I recently bought a dual core Pentium 2.2Ghz motherboard with a cpu and ram plus a half height desktop case(with an itx PSU) from the same era all including shipping for $15. Out those $15 almost $10 was shipping. Why? Because the motherboard has sata ports and I needed a cheap, low power dvr for my security cameras. I then got a 1tb sata drive for about $12 including shipping(shipping is all within one EU country so it is pretty cheap). What does this have to do with retro computing? Well, if retro enthusiasts didn't exist those parts would most likely go to be recycled already. They all came out from a decade old business PCs and I remember the time when people would pay me to take them away. In some sense it is a result of raspberry pi shortages and resulting exorbitant prices that people are much more likely to use old pc hardware for stuff they would use a raspberry pi before. Before anyone comments on power consumption let me say it is possible to run a lot of pc hardware under clocked and undervolted to reach some really low power consumption levels.
- iso1631 4y ago
  > Because the motherboard has sata ports and I needed a cheap, low power dvr for my security cameras How much power does it draw?
- pmontra 4y ago
  There are ARM single board computers with SATA ports that draw single digit Watts. Example: the Odroid HC4. If you don't need some x86 only application they might be OK for you.
- mhd 4y ago
  > It is not just nostalgia. I recently bought a dual core Pentium 2.2Ghz motherboard[...] Yeah, the Core Duo age is probably outside my limit for "retro". At least for now, although this is also at the point where a) you can still run most contemporary stuff outside of high-res video or games without issues, b) accessory and display tech is also mostly in line (flat screens, SATA etc.) and c) few people would use this as vehicles to run old _software_. A good example would be the legion of people still using older Thinkpads. They rarely do this out of retro-enthusiasm.
jll29 4y ago
We had a HP 9000/735 server in the lab with 715-33s as clients at my university for us students (vast overkill: CAD work stations for undergrads doing mostly text processing and compiling Scheme/C/LaTeX files). I remember with affection the refurbished HP 9000/715-75 that I purchased from my side job developing C software while studying. It ran HP-UX 9.03 (eventually 11) and never ever crashed in six years of daily use. Perhaps this was the best material purchase ever, perhaps followed closely by my beautifully bound, 32-volume copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Back then Hewlett-Packard still stood for top-notch engineering, and I could only laugh at fellow undergraduates with their hacky non-preeemptive Windows boxes with tiny CRTs who had their chassis open and cables hanging out, because something always needed fixing. Years later, I purchased a HP 9000/715-100XC for spare parts, just in case.

by mhd 4y ago

unixhero 4y ago

Overpaid? Nah... I got all of mine for about 50usd each

lproven 4y ago

[Article author here] > This seems more about retrocomputing than a history of the lessons of the death of workstations and their vendors. Little bit, yes. I highly recommend following the link and reading Holwerda's article which inspired this. HN discussions on that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33948573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33948573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33953816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33953816

Roark66 4y ago

It is not just nostalgia. I recently bought a dual core Pentium 2.2Ghz motherboard with a cpu and ram plus a half height desktop case(with an itx PSU) from the same era all including shipping for $15. Out those $15 almost $10 was shipping. Why? Because the motherboard has sata ports and I needed a cheap, low power dvr for my security cameras. I then got a 1tb sata drive for about $12 including shipping(shipping is all within one EU country so it is pretty cheap). What does this have to do with retro computing? Well, if retro enthusiasts didn't exist those parts would most likely go to be recycled already. They all came out from a decade old business PCs and I remember the time when people would pay me to take them away. In some sense it is a result of raspberry pi shortages and resulting exorbitant prices that people are much more likely to use old pc hardware for stuff they would use a raspberry pi before. Before anyone comments on power consumption let me say it is possible to run a lot of pc hardware under clocked and undervolted to reach some really low power consumption levels.

iso1631 4y ago
> Because the motherboard has sata ports and I needed a cheap, low power dvr for my security cameras How much power does it draw?
pmontra 4y ago
There are ARM single board computers with SATA ports that draw single digit Watts. Example: the Odroid HC4. If you don't need some x86 only application they might be OK for you.
mhd 4y ago
> It is not just nostalgia. I recently bought a dual core Pentium 2.2Ghz motherboard[...] Yeah, the Core Duo age is probably outside my limit for "retro". At least for now, although this is also at the point where a) you can still run most contemporary stuff outside of high-res video or games without issues, b) accessory and display tech is also mostly in line (flat screens, SATA etc.) and c) few people would use this as vehicles to run old _software_. A good example would be the legion of people still using older Thinkpads. They rarely do this out of retro-enthusiasm.

jll29 4y ago

We had a HP 9000/735 server in the lab with 715-33s as clients at my university for us students (vast overkill: CAD work stations for undergrads doing mostly text processing and compiling Scheme/C/LaTeX files). I remember with affection the refurbished HP 9000/715-75 that I purchased from my side job developing C software while studying. It ran HP-UX 9.03 (eventually 11) and never ever crashed in six years of daily use. Perhaps this was the best material purchase ever, perhaps followed closely by my beautifully bound, 32-volume copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Back then Hewlett-Packard still stood for top-notch engineering, and I could only laugh at fellow undergraduates with their hacky non-preeemptive Windows boxes with tiny CRTs who had their chassis open and cables hanging out, because something always needed fixing. Years later, I purchased a HP 9000/715-100XC for spare parts, just in case.