Re: OpenWRT
Yes, this is all soooo true! And another whole reason why I've been
buying up cheap $15 laptops so I can have my little geek way with them
in a much more energy efficient and environmentally conscientious
fashion. In fact even run them free forever on a equally cheap gellcell
and quite small and cheap chinese solar panel.
OTOH -- the whole reason I bought my first multia was to have my
very own DEC ALPHA -- 64bit unix box to play with, eh? And there's still
that bit of techno-lust that thus far has kept me from literally tossing
it, not to mention the ridiculous amount of time I've spent in the last
couple years trying to get it actually fully functioning properly, and
now that I've finally succeeded in having my way with it, why, what do I
do but immediately drop the cute little thing for new and even younger
--- uh, hmm, gee, maybe I should talk to my shrink about this.
And I also have to confess that I was seriously lusting after some
other alpha boxes that I saw on ebay -- much bigger iron, 4 cpu's each,
raid, etc and the place that had them was even willing to give them away
free -- but they refused to ship because they were so big and heavy and
required crates and trucking and all that stuff that they refused to
deal with -- if only they were closer. My wife would be soo thrilled to
see me dragging a huge alpha minicomputer up to my room. And think of
the electric bill for that thing!
One thing for sure, even now, my computer room is the warmest room
in the house, since rising heat bills forced us to turn down the thermostat.
8-)
Steve Langasek wrote:
>
> I know it's popular among geeks, particularly Debian geeks, to repurpose old
> hardware to keep it running indefinitely, but power consumption is a real,
> hidden cost of running old hardware. I don't have any hard numbers, but I'm
> sorry to say that I suspect buying a new WAP54G AP or similar[1], instead
> of running a multia[2],
Yeah, actually I do have a very nice little WRT54GS that I run
OpenWRT on and it is the access point for the house. Kinda' hard to
explain what I do with the multia -- it has two seano wifi nics each
with two cantennas on them, and.... well, it's a fun toy.
will easily pay for itself in terms of your electric
> bill if you plan to deploy it long-term, and that in terms of environmental
> and out-of-pocket cost, the best use of an old, low-MHz high-wattage system
> like a Multia is to scrap it or recycle it.
>
> [1] http://hardware.mcse.ms/archive80-2005-8-226230.html
> [2] http://www.alphalinux.org/archives/axp-list/1998/February1998/0126.html
>
> Yes, I know the environmental cost of discarding computer hardware is
> significant -- that's why I have a box full of old hardware I'll never use
> again, that I'm sitting on until I have a better option than sending it to a
> landfill. :/ But the cost of electricity is also non-negligible; it
> apparently costs me about USD 0.20/month to run my WAP54G by the first URL
> above, vs. $2.30/mo. as a *conservative* electricity cost for a Multia. At
> $2.10/mo. and a price of USD 64.99 for a new WAP54G (based on a quick
> google), assuming for the moment a cost of $0 for the disposal of the Multia
> (because I don't have any numbers for this :/), a new WAP54G would pay for
> itself in 2 1/2 years. (And on the flipside of ignoring the cost of
> disposing of the Multia, we're also using a "0" for the cost of any PCMCIA
> devices needed to run the Multia as an AP.)
>
> Granted, I suppose if you're doing this for the hack value you have to
> decide how much that's worth to you in itself; but at least for me, the hack
> value is in doing the hacking, not in keeping it running afterwards in a
> manner contrary to my own best interest :), so.
>
> Cheers,
--
Harmon Seaver
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