"Obsolence is just a lack of imagination." - unknown origin.
Retrocomputing both helps to preserve parts of the fast evolving information technology and is also a way to relive technology as it was "back then". Above all that it is also a good way to get in touch with software development or networking technologies.
My two main projects are:
I will go into more details in the specific sections.
The main interest is integrating different operating systems into a working environment that includes a dedicated fileserver, shared home directories, etc. pp. The operating systems used include:
Different systems in the network are configured as servers. The "stable" ones provide the following functions:
Aside from this some are configured as testbed for other services:
A network map listing the hosts and their status is available on a separate page.
Machines designed around the MIPS R3000 - R16000 line of microprocessors are the main topic of the computer collection. These systems offered good performance during their time and were popular because of the graphics capabilities. Silicon Graphics computers were used for example in simulation, computer aided design, movies and medicine.
As a part of this project the sgistuff website was designed which contains a lot of technical information on the Silicon Graphics computers and the IRIX operating system. The collection of Silicon Graphics computers can be viewed in a special section of the sgistuff website, so it will not be repeated on this page.
Sun workstations are well known for stability and performance. The collection deals only with Sun Machines that are based around the Sparc or Ultra Sparc processors. These systems run the Solaris / SunOS operating system, which today is also available for generic Intel x86 systems. The Sun collection was actually the beginning of all Workstation collections. These systems were the first computers I got in touch with, that were neither home computers nor IBM compatible PCs. The goal is to collect a reasonable amount of samples across the product line and to upgrade these.
Aside from Silicon Graphics and Sun computers the collection contains other machines, that caught my interest. This includes IBM PS/2 computers as well as HP PA-RISC workstations. This part of the collection is less stable, because I sometimes trade these systems for other stuff.
A collection list is available on a separate page.