Re: Another Alpha turned off...

On Feb 16, 4:17 pm, Michael Austin <maus...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It was a sad day for me today as I completed the final backup and making
sure everything I needed was removed from my trusty Alpha 2100 that has
been running firstdbasource.com and spacelots.com for the past 8-9
years. I purchased (or traded services for systems) 2 Alpha 2100's
during 1999. Both had just been retired at 2 separate Charlotte-based
companies and had been running at those sites for 4-5 years at that
time. I lost one of them about 3 years ago - bad I/O board and it has
been sitting silent acting as storage unit for a monitor/keyboard of the
other server. During Christmas week, I found 2 inexpensive DS10L's that
have taken the place of the 2100's. The "good" 2100/275 may live yet
again as a small Samba file server for a local law firm, but that is
still being negotiated. (hey, I may even make back the $1K I paid for it
:) ). The other will be taken to a local computer recycling center for
disposal after cannibalizing any remaining boards. (The SCSI card is now
in my DS10L :))

DEC made the very best hardware in the business. I do not see ANY
vendor that even comes close to competing. Along with the 2 2100's, I
also have been running a |d|i|g|i|t|a|l| Starion 266MhzPentI+32Mb mem.
I purchased it in '97 from a Frye's Electronics in Phoenix and it had
been a floor demo that ran from the time they received it in 1995 until
I bought it. In 1999, I wiped Windows95 off of it and installed Caldera
Linux. It's sole purpose in life since 1999 is to keep my DSL IP
address in sync with my Dynamic DNS provider ZONEEDIT.COM In 2000 the
primary port on the IDE controller died in such a way that there was no
more "C:" drive. I created a boot-floppy that stays in the floppy drive
and boots, then turns control over to the D: drive... It has been doing
this now for 8+ years - headless. I have a feeling the Starion is dying
as the fan gets loud at times and the box reboots itself every couple
months. I have a feeling my 6 year old Dell box will replace its
functionality - but do not think it will last as long as the Starion
has... almost 13 years - almost as long as the 2100's.

They have served me well -please pause for a moment of silence...

Long Live Alpha.

I have a 1989 vintage VS3100-30 on my desk at work. One service call
to replace the SCSI board back in the early '90s, and I filled up its
memory as other sites retired compatible systems. The GPX video board
and the power supply died in a terrible power hit last year (that also
fried the isoBAR they were plugged in to) and I replaced it with my
spare SPX board and p/s from home (spares for my 1991-ish VS3100-m76,
which also still runs fine but is shut down most of the time). The
VS3100-30 still has one of its original RZ24 drives (the other was
replaced and sold as a spare to a customer). Three monitors have
passed on while in use by this system (one VR150, and two VR299s). It
currently sports a snazzy NEC LCD2010.

Nice, nice reliability and build quality. The only problem with my
VS3100-30 is that it wants an expensive true-sine-wave UPS, which work
won't buy. The simulated sine wave output of a cheaper one starts
making the power supply very unhappy (displayed by release of heat,
and the smell of impending magic smoke dispensation).

The oldest Alpha here was the PC AXP150 which was running from 1993 to
2005; we gave that one away after updating to a DS10. My AS200
purchased from Onsale.com in (I think) 1997 is still going strong,
running 24x7 practically since new, except for upgrades (384MB RAM and
a KZPBA with nice drives attached).

Long live VAX! (and Alpha too!)

.

Relevant Pages

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