Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
Last weekend, I gave away an old Digital Audio Mac G4. Yesterday, after weeks of missing one another, a lady from Freecycle took away an old Gateway Pentium/150 which I'd done up. Another chap came round and collected an old AMD motherboard and an AthlonXP 2200+ CPU I had lying around, and I delivered jamesb's old PC, restored, refurbished and installed with Linux Mint to armchairanalyst. Which is all good.
But today, with the wonderful transport assistance of my next-door neighbour Dave, a chap in Docklands took no less than ten old PCs off my hands. He's building a Linux cluster. I've pointed out to him that a cluster of 486s and Pentium 1s will have a lot less CPU performance than a single 5y old PC, let alone anything modern, but hey, it sounds like a fun project and I'm going to help him with it if I can. No idea what he wants to run on it, but I think I've just quadrupled the size of his cluster. He's happy, I'm happy.
I've also got my Birdy back from Bikefix, after nine months. They were having a hell of a time finding a new dynamo for it, but it seems there was just a communications breakdown. They couldn't find my bike at first, but then another engineer stepped in. Although the boss had heard nothing about it when I last spoke to him, they'd managed to "bodge" (their words) a new dynamo onto it and it's apparently been ready for ages - I'd just not got any of their messages.
Nice one, Bikefix, and thanks!
So my garage is moving back towards its rightful state of being full of bikes instead of old computers. There's still a pile of old Macs for me to do up & dispose of, though. Anyone fancy a classic 680x0-based Macintosh, kitted out, maxed out with upgrades & all ready to go?
The 1st one up for grabs is a Performa 630 with TV card. Lovely little machine. I've added 10base-T Ethernet & about 36MB RAM; it runs MacOS 8.1, Word 5.1 and a handful of other apps. All geared up with IE 4 and Netscape 4, the latest it can run. The last ever 68040 Mac, I believe. I can offer 14" or 17" monitors for it, and naturally it comes with a mouse and keyboard (your choice, curvy or boxy mouse, compact or Extended II keyboard).
It also comes with the Apple remote control, so you can use it as a remote-controlled TV set or CD player. Has MP3 playback software installed but it doesn't really have the horsepower to cope with MP3s, let alone digital video. You can surf the web at a somewhat... majestic pace, though.
Also comes with a StyleWriter 2500, and for the ambitious, if you want to go for the PowerPC uprade option that the LowEndMac page I link to above mentions, I can give throw in Performa 6200 as well... I might even be able to raise the DOS compatibility card from somewhere!
But today, with the wonderful transport assistance of my next-door neighbour Dave, a chap in Docklands took no less than ten old PCs off my hands. He's building a Linux cluster. I've pointed out to him that a cluster of 486s and Pentium 1s will have a lot less CPU performance than a single 5y old PC, let alone anything modern, but hey, it sounds like a fun project and I'm going to help him with it if I can. No idea what he wants to run on it, but I think I've just quadrupled the size of his cluster. He's happy, I'm happy.
I've also got my Birdy back from Bikefix, after nine months. They were having a hell of a time finding a new dynamo for it, but it seems there was just a communications breakdown. They couldn't find my bike at first, but then another engineer stepped in. Although the boss had heard nothing about it when I last spoke to him, they'd managed to "bodge" (their words) a new dynamo onto it and it's apparently been ready for ages - I'd just not got any of their messages.
Nice one, Bikefix, and thanks!
So my garage is moving back towards its rightful state of being full of bikes instead of old computers. There's still a pile of old Macs for me to do up & dispose of, though. Anyone fancy a classic 680x0-based Macintosh, kitted out, maxed out with upgrades & all ready to go?
The 1st one up for grabs is a Performa 630 with TV card. Lovely little machine. I've added 10base-T Ethernet & about 36MB RAM; it runs MacOS 8.1, Word 5.1 and a handful of other apps. All geared up with IE 4 and Netscape 4, the latest it can run. The last ever 68040 Mac, I believe. I can offer 14" or 17" monitors for it, and naturally it comes with a mouse and keyboard (your choice, curvy or boxy mouse, compact or Extended II keyboard).
It also comes with the Apple remote control, so you can use it as a remote-controlled TV set or CD player. Has MP3 playback software installed but it doesn't really have the horsepower to cope with MP3s, let alone digital video. You can surf the web at a somewhat... majestic pace, though.
Also comes with a StyleWriter 2500, and for the ambitious, if you want to go for the PowerPC uprade option that the LowEndMac page I link to above mentions, I can give throw in Performa 6200 as well... I might even be able to raise the DOS compatibility card from somewhere!