[VERY OT while waiting for Lenny?] reminiscing on old computers

["Douglas A. Tutty" <dtutty@porchlight.ca>]

On Sun, Apr 06, 2008 at 06:18:51PM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 06, 2008 at 08:23:20PM -0400, Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
> 
> so now we can twiddle our thumbs, go on random OT rants and rest
> assured that lenny will be out any time. When's the next utnubu due
> out? That always brings a few interesting ones. Maybe we should run
> some more google trends charts? 
> 

We could reminise about my 486 that doesn't run Debian anymore.  I
wonder if Lenny will run on my P-II or if that's another box for
OpenBSD.

I remember my 386.  It was an IBM PS/2 model 70-A21.  It came with the
then-unherd of 120MB hard drive, MCA bus, and I put 4 MB ram into it,
running OS/2, IBM Fortran compiler (the reason I bought a computer in
the first place), WordPerfect 4.?, and AutoCad 11.

It died after two years.  That second summer was very hot and we didn't
have air-conditioning.  The system-board cracked across like a
cookie-sheet in the oven.  I don't know if the problem was the board or
the plastic case.  Room temp was over 40 C with about 90% humidity.
This happend just as I was entering the summer before final year in
nursing and I was writing many essays and doing stats research (and the
only one in the class doing it in Fortran instead of the stats package
that required MS something).

I replaced the 386 with my IBM 486 ValuePoint 6492X5C, 16 MB ram (now
32MB).  This box still runs like a charm but gagged on Etch and runs
OpenBSD just fine.

My P-II was given to me full of cat hair.  The people who gave it to me
needed a box with USB.  I read the manual for the board and popped out
the cover on the back of the case and lo and behold there are two
functioning USB ports on the MB.  :)  The PSU is flaky, the CPU fan
bearing is noisy (hostname= rocky, as in a gravel truck).  It does take
large drives so is a good second box but it only has 64 MB ram and isn't
reliable (too much heat damage?) to bother adding more.  Will it run
Lenny well?

Any way, I wonder if any on-topic stuff has come up?

Doug.