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Recycling Vintage Alphas with Debian

Posted by timothy on from the be-your-own-curator dept.

robstah writes: "Vintage Alpha based systems, such as the DECstation are often available going cheap at auctions or free from a skip as companies 'upgrade' to PCs. As many goverments now want to prevent computers from ending up in landfill one solution is for us geeks to recycle. How? Installing Debian of course. Debian Planet has a great article on installing Debian on vintage Alphas."

3 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Forget Debian... by Robber+Baron · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I want a VMS system! That's what I'd like to get MY hands on an Alpha system for. Either that or I'll have to wait for freeVMS to get off the ground...hooah!

    --

    You're using her as bait, Master!

  2. History of Slashdot by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I remember when Slashdot ran on an old Alpha. Rob kept a Multia/UDB 166MHz at his university - This was the original Slashbox. It may have also run "Chips n' Dips"- for you other 'pre-UID' geezers out there.

    Even then, Slash traffic was heavy. Mod:perl groaned on this host! It was a testament to the DEC folks that it ran with more than a couple hundred connections at all! After all, the Multia was a severely compromised Alpha design, which mated the CPU to a PC-style I/O bus.

    Bandwidth consumption forced the removal of Slashdot to real hosting. Was this in '98? Anyhow, shortly thereafter VA donations (pre Andover) moved Slashdot onto dual PII's, and the mighty growth of Slashcode ensued! That's about the time my own Multia started to overheat and require BLOWING INTO THE CASE before rebooting. I put Debian Ham on a K5, and moved my RISC fetish onto early UltraSparc and SGI R10000.

    Who else originally found this place because they were looking for WindowMaker .10 -era related sites, and watched Rob's link collection grow?

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  3. If you want to Recycle AND promote Opensource.. by LeSexyLemur · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Warning-plug ahead

    I am the adminof ACCRC and I thought a plug for the nonprofit I work at is appropriate here.

    ACCRC refurbishes computers and donates them to worthy causes. All donated machines go out the door w/ Suse preinstalled and the retail box taped to the side.

    Our charter allows us to accept any Technology as a donation. That which can not be placed w/ a worthy cause is used for cool projects in house.
    (ie permanent magnet motors in huge old tape drives are being played with for windmill generator possibilities)

    If you want to donate, volunteer, or just say "Hi", check out http://www.accrc.org/

    END plug
    ok
    This place rocks I have alot of fun and get to save the world at the same time. 'nuff said

    Cheers,
    -chris
    admin
    slashdot reader
    he who fears the 'effect'