Non x-86/Mac-PPC Workstations?

Aknaton asks: "As I begin to plan for my annual fall purchase of new hardware, I would like to try something different. I have already owned several PPC Macs running MacOS X and many PCs but they still leave me wanting more. I have begun looking for non-Apple/X86 alternatives but I am not finding much. SGI still makes machines but they don't even list prices. Sun offers the SunBlade 100, for just under a grand and it is a consideration. Can anyone else suggest, or know of, any other options? Or is it just a PC world after all?"

Comments

What about legacy hardware?

[catseye]

Someone else already mentioned that all you'll do with different "modern" hardware is compile the same old stuff for a different processor. How truly different are modern machines, especially with ubiquitous operating systems like Linux?

Maybe a more interesting challenge would be to hunt down some legacy hardware you never worked with, for example. An Amiga or Atari ST might be an interesting challenge, and both still have vibrant developer and user communities (maybe too vibrant, in the case of the Amiga ;) ), and represent substantially different hardware and software architectures than you're likely to run into today.

Just a thought, this may be a bit off-topic from what you're doing -- I don't know if you're looking to do "useful" things with this machine or just tinker.

-A.

Cray XMP or Mac II

[Noodlenose]

Well, it depends a bit on you budget: from time to time a Cray XMP or YMP pops up (the last one was in ebay germany ca 4 months ago for 15000 $ (without shipping)) and you could not only have a nice and fast machine with a+ geekfactor, but also a nice couch for your livingroom and a nice conversation piece for the next cocktailparty/geekmeeting.

Or do what I did and get yourself a Apple IIFX(another ex-supercomputer, just a bit cheaper), put a Radius Rocket in it and try running Linux on it.

If you want it a bit easier, get yourself a IICX and run NetBSD on it (nice and easy).

Go for a used Sun

[pmz]

Take a look at the secondary market of Sun hardware. For less than $1000, you can have an Ultra 2 workstation with SCSI disks and SMP capability. Or you get an older SPARCstation 10 or 20 that still supports SCSI-2 and up to 4 CPUs.

While these computers won't win CPU2000 flame wars, they really are beautiful machines that have full firmware, super-clean layout, and integrated Ethernet and SCSI. Also, you can run Solaris 8, Linux, NetBSD, and OpenBSD on them. They make great personal workstations (I have KDE on a 40MHz SS10--still usable) or great file or web servers. On top of that, they run forever (my SS10 is now 10 years old). Because they're SCSI, you can put big disks into them (9GB, no problem) and connect external tapes, CDROMs and Zip drives to them. Even the old ones support gobs of ram (at least 512MB). If you can figure it out, the SS10s even have integrated ISDN interfaces.

In short, they are a joy to work with.

There are many vendors, so be sure to get several quotes. Some vendors are arrogant and still think they can charge an arm and a leg for old hardware. Don't let them get you down, because you will find a good price if you are persistent. Also, try eBay or other auctions.

PS2! (Not PS/2)

[Bistronaut]

In another month, the US version of the Linux kit for the Playstation 2 is coming out. It comes with a hard drive, a VGA monitor connector, a keyboard and mouse and an ethernet adaptor. I already have mine pre-ordered, and I bought the acutal console last week.

As a side note, be sure to get Grand Theft Auto 3! Oh, the carnage!

Re:Why?

[alangmead]

In Kernagan and Pike's The Practice of Programming they argue that programs that are written to be portable are inherently better programs. The abstractions that need to be done to make a program work across different operating systems and architectures, (and don't think of "Unix" as a single operating system. Think of it as a family of operating systems.) are abstractions that help improve program quality.

If systems seem all the same to you, then either the range of systems you have developed for are rather limited, or the complexity of the development has been rather shallow.

Re:Yeah but...

[fm6]

Yeah, that was one marketing strategy for the Indy. And I suppose some developers actually used it that way. But the main strength of most SGI hardware is in high-performance computing. The Indy, despite its MIPS architecture, is just not a HPC machine. Hard to see developing for the Indy as being much of stepping-stone.

I could be mistaken, but I think the Indy was positioned as a business computer, something people would buy instead of an IBM AT. Note the standard cam, the built-in ISDN hardware, the bundled whiteboard software. A lot more profitable market than ILM wannabes who can't afford an Indigo

Re:Yeah but...

[ksheff]

I can't speak for all Indy customers, but that was the reason why the place I used to work at bought them. At the time we had only 2 or 3 big SGI machines with graphics pipelines. Having an Indy on the desktop, we could develop and test gl or ImageVision programs on our own workstations and then copy the binaries over to the big machines for production use. I'm sure SGI used them for their internal developers too. The ISDN option seems like something one would want to have if you were at home and telecommuting (at the time it was introduced anyway). I never saw any product literature touting it as a normal business computer, just an affordable scientific/graphics workstation. Off the top of my head I can't recall any business apps for those machines.