14 Nov
2022
14 Nov
'22
4:17 p.m.
Back when Beowulf clusters were a thing, I bought 4 boxes at the Bargain Barn at UCD for
$100, so I could play. I never did the Beowulf cluster, although I did play around a bit.
I kept the boxes for quite a while. I had 4 identical boxes. The hardware didn't
have many issues and if it did I swapped out between boxes. There are a lot of things
where speed doesn't matter that much. And I use the terminal/console a lot. For
example, email.
It turned out to be $100 well spent. I think they were original 386's.
A little before then, when the Earth was still nicely warm, there was the WinTel
"conspiracy". The theory being that you could do most things with pretty
minimal hardware, but Microsoft was intentionally bloating software so that you had to buy
bigger hardware than necessary e.g. Snoopy flight simulator Easter Eggs in Excel.
IHMO, the same thing is happening now with library bloat. A page loads, then does nothing
for awhile, then lets you do something, then erases it. I realize if I had a faster
system or better connection, that wouldn't happen, but I was trying to find a good
oven temperature for roasting pumpkin seeds. Some of the "recipe" sites had
side videos of active 3rd person shooter games and for most of them I had to watch a video
to get the information. The videos are garbage. It made me laugh. I used a cookbook I
have. Which meant I had to get up out of the chair I was in, but it was worth it.
I think I'll keep my books for a while longer.
I don't know if the WinTel conspiracy was real. It sure seemed like it. But the most
recent manifestation is just due to the usual suspects, stupidity and laziness, IMHO.
-Gary
On Sat, Nov 12, 2022 at 08:08:39AM -0700, Linus Sphinx wrote:
Fragile? This thing could stop a 9mm. I had a pile
left when I retired,
every time corp. gave me a new I one threw old one in a closet, been
refreshing and distributing them to young family who don't know the
difference recently. If you have no expectations it's fast right? Was at
sis-in-law's and a niece was dragging a dell latitude around by the
external scsi cable, (mom removed, set aside hard drive and battery), like
a fischer-price toy, laughed til I cried, so cute. Got an ancient guy I
don't even know with COPD across the road chained to an oxygen bottle, met
his sister, using Windows his nephew isn't supporting on a pc still running
7 and won't make it to 10, should have seen his face when a stranger
knocked on the door and handed him a Dell E6400t fully loaded with FC36
ready to boot and finish in its original case. Great way to make friends
too. Can't believe how fast he caught on, wish I could have hired him as an
admin 30 years ago.
On Fri, Nov 11, 2022 at 11:02 PM Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> Quoting Linus Sphinx (sphinxtar(a)gmail.com):
>
> > After an all night session of drunken research I've come to the
> conclusion
> > there are no 32 bit linux distros left that will fit on a CD-R and
> actually
> > install a desktop, hell DVD-R either. Was going to give my faithful old
> > Dell i486 laptop to a neighbor kid to play with but I think it's dead
> Jim.
> > Suggestions?
>
> Yes.
>
> Note the year, and recycle them.
>
> I could list all the reasons why trying to keep such ridiculously old
> and fragile computers going is a bad idea, but most should be obvious.
>
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