Zeno's Paradox: Updates and Inventory

Zeno's Paradox

October 24, 2003 - Updates and Inventory

I've been a bit absent from this blog for a while. Last week, I was working on creating a Flash interface that that allows searches on the Oyez database. This week has been mostly spent taking care of smaller tasks that I missed last week while trying to get the demo out the door for Jonathan's Glasgow trip. Today, I have been waiting at home for FedEx to deliver my copy of MacOS X 10.3. I'm currently backing up my OS X disk to my Linux box as I await delivery of Panther.

If I were smart, I would have started backing up the software earlier. *shrug* In the meantime as I've been waiting, I have managed to clean out my "server closet" and do an informal inventory of the computer collection. Folks, I swear, I attract old boxes like a lamp attracts moths.

So, without much ado, here's the inventory:

In the dining room, I have my G4 mirrored drive desktop and a Macintosh Classic. The G4 is my primary computer that I purchased to replace the G4 PowerBook I had grown out of. Thus far, I can say that I feel that the G4 is the best computer I've ever owned. It just works. The Mac Classic is something I purchased off eBay a few months ago. I was hoping to to find some old software to install on it mainly for nostalgia value. I'm currently looking for OS 7 install media and a copy of Oregon Trail. I admit that I haven't used this computer that much, but I hope that will change soon.

In the living room, I have the Series2 Tivo. This is included mainly as it has a hard drive and wireless network connection. Not much else to say. It's my Tivo.

In my bedroom, I recently purchased a desk for the SGI Indy that I acquired when NU was getting rid of legacy machines. I haven't been able to do much with it yet, but I have acquired Irix 6 install media, and I'm waiting for a SCSI drive to use to install the system. Alongside the Indy is a Dell Inspiron 5000 running XP that I used as my primary Windows box for a while. It is now serving duty as a dedicated iTunes client that plays music off my desktop in my bedroom. I've installed some other software on it, but I've not used it too much recently other than as a glorified stereo. I originally picked this laptop up about four years ago when I first started my independent consulting gig in school. The funny thing about this machine is that I've got a few more months of payment left on it, in which I'll spend more paying off than I would be able to sell the machine for anyways. *shrug*

In a central closet that I've turned into a server room (sick, no?) There are a whole host of machines. The main machine is an eMachines Celeron 400 that runs my e-mail and web sites. I've beefed up the RAM in it and it does a good job as a little server (your reading this page off it now). Next to the Celeron is a Windows 2000 box that I set up for my girlfriend to use as a Quicken server since she got rid of her Windows laptop. This will become unnecessary really soon as I set up something similar at her place later today. Next to that box is the Athlon system I build early last year. I was hoping to turn this into a dedicated Windows gaming box when Half-Life 2 came out, but due to the delays, I've elected to move this box to the closet in order to serve as a general server for my Windows-based applications (Remote Desktop rules). It's a fairly beefy box and I use it to run Quicken and do a bit of Java development remotely.

Sitting besides these boxes and out of commission temporarily are three beigh G3 desktop machines. I originally wanted to put Linux on them, but I'm still figuring out how to do that without having a dedicated MacOS partition. At the moment, they all have OS X 10.2 installed, but the usefulness is minimal at this point. I also have a G3 tower that I refurbished for a friend of a friend, but I think she has decided not to use it. I imagine that this will also get a Linux install and do some kind of server task if I don't get rid of it.

Also, don't forget the 486 laptop with 4MB of RAM. It runs DOS 6 and Windows 3.11, so it's a bit of a legacy machine. I was using this as a serial terminal for the servers, but it's idle now. I also have just acquired a Compaq Pentium 233 machine this morning.

So, if an inventory was taken of the machines and operating systems, I would have twelve machines (not counting the Tivo) running the following operating systems:

Windows 3.11 (1)
Windows 95 (1)
Windows 2000 (1)
Windows XP (2)
Debian Linux (1)
MacOS 7 (1)
MacOS 9 (1)
MacOS X (4)
Irix 6 (1)

So as is obvious, this is quite the motley crew.

Posted by br284 at 01:42 PM

Trackbacks

Comments