[ale] How old is this list?

[Jim Kinney]

Uh, yeah!! Couldn't afford a 64-bit system prior to the Opteron (that I basically paid double for thanks to lightning - OUCH!).

Later I rattled through ebay gear like SGIs, HPs. Never did Sun or IBM on my dime.

If I had put the money I spent on hardware into retirement funding, I could have already parked at Shady Acres to watch tv with breakfast beer. But I would not have had near as much fun. I'm hesitant to think about how much my power consumption contributes to global warming. Just the waste heat alone from the earlier server stack kept an uninsulated den floor barefoot warm in winter.  Big computes were only for cold weather.

On February 2, 2021 5:38:50 PM EST, DJ-Pfulio via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>On 2/2/21 4:56 PM, Jim Kinney via Ale wrote:
>> 
>> Linux is so much more than it used to be. I'm very glad Maddog gave
>> that alpha to Linus! Stood in a line to get that first AMD Opteron
>> cpu and mobo and had a working, mostly 64-bit install about 6 hours
>> later. To bad that box got hit by lightning 5 weeks later.
>
>Well, the Opteron wasn't an Alpha, lest anyone be confused. Guess Jim
>was happy about 64-bit Unix code basically being a solved problem long
>before PC hardware was 64-bit.
>
>First time I met Maddog (doubt he remembers) was after my boss's boss
>at Loral NASA-JSC told me to make time to go meet someone, whatever to
>took. Perhaps 5 people made it to the location. He handed out Linux +
>Alpha temporary tattoos.  My job provided lots of flexibility since I
>was on-call 24/7/360 (or so). Swore I'd never have an on-call job
>again, ever. There's only so many 2am-5am pages someone not in
>operations should get.
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-- 
Computers amplify human error
Super computers are really cool
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