Re: Another Alpha turned off...

On Feb 16, 5:17 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.

My employer still has lots of VAXs (8550, 3500, 4300, etc.) and older
Aphas (2100, 4100, etc) that just refuse to die and, because marketing
people now control the purse strings at most companies, will probably
never be replaced anytime soon. More than 80% of them have full
software support contracts with HP so they probably appear as 25-50
line-items on some accountant's balance *** at HP, but in the long
run I fear that HP won't consider this stuff real until I can convince
someone here to at leat replace the VAX machines with a newer Itanium
boxs.

Hardware dies while new hardware evolves, but let's hope that OpenVMS
lives on.

Neil Rieck
Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/links/cool_openvms.html
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/links/openvms_demos.html
.