Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Of the Love of Oldtimers - Dusting Off a Sun Fire V1280 Server

Posted by Unknown on from the mine-bitcoins-while-heating-your-home dept.

vikingpower writes "Today, I decided to acquire a refurbished Sun Fire V1280 server, with 8 CPUs. The machine will soon or may already belong to a certain history of computing. This project is not about high-performance computing, much more about lovingly dusting off and maintaining a piece of hardware considered quirky by 2013 standards. And Now the question creeps to mind: what software would Slashdotters run on such a beast, once it is upgraded to 12 procs and, say, 24 GiB of RAM ?"

7 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I work for a recycling center, and we sell some of our stuff we get on ebay, got a few smaller sunfires in, Debian works GREAT on SPARC machines, its still active, and everything works OOB

  2. Free software. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Many free software projects are not regularly tested on anything other than x86.
    Make your system available for free software developers and you will be sure to have
    the loag average of 30 or more. Ghostscript project, for instance, would greatly benefit
    from testing on minority platforms.

  3. No emotional connection by Weaselmancer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I own some old stuff. An Amiga 2000, a C64, an Apple IIe, a Macintosh se/30. I maintain them because they were a part of my childhood. I have an emotional connection to these machines. Someday (I am watching) I will buy the digital microvax my old university used for their comp labs if I can. Loved that box. Spent days on it. I'll own an original Defender cabinet someday too.

    I guess what I'm trying to say is why? You have no connection to this machine. You won't get nostalgic when you see it boot. Why bother?

    --
    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
  4. I'll adjust your statement... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > Debian works GREAT on SPARC64 machines

    Go try it with a real vintage sparc32 box and see where you land. Sparc32, specifically SMP, has been broken since 2.2.19, and UP support has been unstable for most of 2.4 and 2.6

    I have however heard that netbsd 6.0 or 6.0.1 had sparc32 smp support fixed after all these years, but it's hearsay and not mentioned in the sparc arch changelog.

  5. Re:Keep it Vintage by Lord+Kano · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm into vintage firearms. I can't tell you how many times I've seen an old WWII or WWI vintage rifle that's worth next to nothing because some Bubba went and fucked it up. Guns that would be worth a lot of money if they were un-messed with are only worth a couple hundred dollars. I assume it's the same with most classic car collectors.

    LK

    --
    "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
  6. Re:I must be getting old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I ran a Sun Sparc 2 until 2007. Had it loaded up with 96 MB of memory. I was using it as a DNS and qmail server. It was running fine when I took it down. I just didn't want to support a 16 year old machine.

    I still run a 40 year old Linn LP-12 belt-drive turntable. Not because it's "vintage". No. I run it because it's a damn good turntable and you can't buy anything better today without paying $2000 or more.

  7. quarterly and annual recurring runs by girlinatrainingbra · · Score: 3, Interesting

    mod parent up! Nobody considers the problem of quarterly and annual recurring data batch runs!!! You would be totally screwed up expecting your server to be available an d it turns out to be down just because someone monitored it over a 6-8 week period which just happened to miss the beginning or end of the quarterly reports, eh?