Poofy Goof Rant-O-Matic

Kris asked me about the microvax-II again. the one in the small-filing-cabinet-sized BA123 case. it comes up every year or so when any work is done on the basement.

"When are you getting rid of that thing?" she asks.

"It worked the last time I fired it up," I said. it's what I usually say. this time I had to think about it for a while, though. I can't exactly recall the last time it was fired up. it has probably been over five years at this point. I don't think I've brought it up since the datacenter racks were installed in 2003.

why do I hold on to it? why am I keeping it? the last DECStation 2100 I tried to bring up for a fellow NetBSD user didn't come up. but it's still in my basement. I have at least two SGIs with bad power supplies that don't power up. since I don't regularly sit in my datacenter, things are starting to pile up.

in college it didn't take much justification to bring this stuff home. it was free, I had plenty of free time, and loved tinkering with these things. now other projects vie for my attention. I seldom come home and spend evenings fiddling with my collection of obsolete hardware. this last week I have spent cooking, playing world of warcraft, and performing brew club housekeeping. (my music studio is in a similar state to my computer corner, although it gets fired up on a more regular basis than my obsolete hardware collection, and the equipment is in a better general state of repair.)

my goal has always been to make a computer lab containing working examples of historically significant machines, or even just machines which retain a large portion of sheer raging nostalgia for myself or others. a lab to make sure that nobody forgets the best and worst of old architectures. a lab to prove portability between big and little endian, 32- and 64-bit, and scalability from the low MHz to the multi GHz range. a lab to squeeze the last bits of usefulness out of machines that have been retired.

the last bit that has me concerned with the VAX. I can't get any practical usefulness out of it, unless you consider it an odd sort of space heater. it has the largest size / utility ratio of any of the rest of equipment.

reality sets in.

I need to plan a wake for the microvax-II.