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Post by retrobits on Apr 3, 2009 15:02:39 GMT -5
Hi there,
For those who have experience with classic workstations (Sun SparcStation, HP PA-RISC systems, IBM RS/6000, SGI, Apollo), what was your favorite old workstation? What made it your favorite?
I liked the Sun "pizza box" SparcStations. For one thing, I just like the way they look. But also, the machines had lots of performance, the boot firmware was interesting and versatile, and the screens always looked so crisp (they were generally paired with REALLY nice CRT monitors).
Thoughts? Memories?
- Earl
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Post by lorddoomicus on Apr 3, 2009 17:25:46 GMT -5
I've always liked Sun Workstations. I grew up on Sun boxes. I also like SGI's. I have a couple of SGi's ( an Indy and Crimson ). I also have an Ultra 60 that is my main UNIX server at my house.
I really would like to get my hands on a Cray EL or J90.
- Derrik
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Post by relayer on Apr 4, 2009 13:58:55 GMT -5
I got a couple of SGI Indigo 2 systems that I would like to try and get running. Unfortunately, I don't know what the IRIX admin passwords are. Nor, do I have the 13W3 video cable.
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Post by twilitezoner on Apr 6, 2009 8:59:52 GMT -5
Hi there, For those who have experience with classic workstations (Sun SparcStation, HP PA-RISC systems, IBM RS/6000, SGI, Apollo), what was your favorite old workstation? What made it your favorite? I liked the Sun "pizza box" SparcStations. For one thing, I just like the way they look. But also, the machines had lots of performance, the boot firmware was interesting and versatile, and the screens always looked so crisp (they were generally paired with REALLY nice CRT monitors). Thoughts? Memories? - Earl We recently cleared out some old inventory from our Data Center and I picked up a couple of the Sun pizza box servers and a tower or 2. These are great boxes for boning up on Solaris. The CRT's that we have are the Sun branded Sony models and the video is very nice. I have always wanted to snag a SGI system. There have at times been some being offered here locally on Craigslist for free, but they were long gone by the time I inquired about them.
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Post by David Murray on Apr 6, 2009 13:46:09 GMT -5
Well, it is hard for me to pick a favorite since the only ones I had experience with were the Sparcstations. I used to pick those up at the local sidewalk sale back in the 1990's for about $100 a piece. For the longest time I used the LX models which were little "lunchbox" shaped computers. I thought they were the cutest thing back in a time when most PCs were monster tower cases. Eventually they didn't have enough power for me so I started buying and playing with the pizza-box versions. I used a Sparcstation 20 with dual processors as my main workstation for many years. keep in mind that I generally ran RedHat linux on the machines, and later one Debian linux after Redhat dropped support.
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Post by thurstan on Apr 7, 2009 16:49:32 GMT -5
only real experience I have is with the DEC Athena which hooked into our VAX system. At my university we had a few of these in the library that nobody ever used, as you needed a special account to logon to them and nobody knew what they were for. So i timidly asked for an account and bing I was in! So i could wander into the library when it was busy and not have to hunt for a free dumb terminal or PC to access my email on the VAX.
It was then (1993/4) that I first got on the Web, they had a MCSA Mosaic browser installed and I launched myself onto the information superhighway!!! The PCs didn't have browsers for a year or two at least so me and a select bunch of computer students could surf the web.
great machines, but i never made use of their power. I studied Astrophysics and one of my lecturers had a Silicon Graphics machine he used for galactic modelling, he showed me some kind of flight simulator and it blew me away. very impressive.
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Post by aragon on Apr 9, 2009 8:24:29 GMT -5
I was really impressed by SGI's workstations back in the 1990's... But I think my favourite was the NeXTStation. I was lucky when a fellow student brought his personal machine to our university and I had the chance to play around with it for some precious afternoons! Luckily, I had a chance to relive and intensify this experience a few months ago when I was able to set up NextStep 3.3 in a virtual machine on my notebook What a great machine!
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Post by retrobits on Apr 9, 2009 13:37:43 GMT -5
I saw a NeXT box once at a business-focused computer store in the LA area (Businessland). It was a mighty nice looking system. I never had the chance to do anything with it.
Aragon: How does one install NextStep 3.3 in a virtual environment? Do you have a pointer? That would be fun to do...
- Earl
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Post by aragon on Apr 15, 2009 6:15:15 GMT -5
Basically, I started following this guide: kordtokrax.de/nsinvm/how-to.htmlSorry, the text is in German only, but the screenshots are what you really need to get going. After installation, the biggest problem in vmware is replacing the mouse driver with one that works properly. I remember that I had a few problems getting the network config up and running, but again, a new driver did the trick. What really blew my mind is the development environment. If you have a chance to find the developer's disk, be sure to check this out. Fully object-oriented, graphical development with Objective-C in a Unix environment with Display Postscript, Renderman and a very useful class library. Impressing and definitely far ahead of its time. This is the foundation that Mac OSX built upon. All in all, I really enjoyed playing around with this system. It runs very smooth and is reasonably small (around 1GB only!). If you are looking for support, check out the Nextstep forum: www.nextcomputers.org/forums/
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Post by archimed on May 5, 2009 10:27:59 GMT -5
My only experience was with a NeXTStation at my local university when I was about 12 years old. My mother would let me play games up in the computer lab while she was working in office (she was a graduate student at the time), and the lab had 2 black-and-white NeXTStations sitting side by side. The rest of the PC's were 386s running Windows 3.11 Both NeXT slabs had these "DO NOT TOUCH" signs on them, so I never got to play with them. I remember that they had a "Wile E. Coyote" screensaver/password prompt that would shake if you put in the wrong l/p combination. Seeing a black 17" CRT in those days was like seeing a 30" Apple Cinema display these days, let me tell you.
Long story short.. last summer I was browsing craigslist locally, and somebody was selling a NeXT box (including monitor and keyboard) for $75. I rushed out to buy it, and asked the owner where he had gotten it from. He said "Oh, the university was clearing out some of their old computers a few weeks ago, and I saw a couple of these piled up in the corner. The guy running the auction let me take one." So I looked at the back of the machine, and sure enough - this was one of the two NeXT slabs that had sat in the back of the computer lab when I was 12 years old -- over fifteen years earlier. Talk about synchronicity (!)
The only thing I need to get this running properly is a 2gb SCSI drive, which I've never managed to track down.
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Post by aragon on May 6, 2009 1:37:36 GMT -5
Yep, finding a 2GB SCSI drive could be tricky. Just googled for it and saw price tags that made my eyes bleed But getting a NeXTStation or even a Cube is so cool! When I started playing with Nextstep again, I thought of buying an HP Gecko for about 50 €, but since my time and space is limited, I did not buy it. Nice story, archimed!
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