[geeks] What's your computing history? Plus inventory and Sun Blade Questions.

[William Barnett-Lewis]

I'll combine this and the inventory thread. 

I'm 37 and got my start in computers when my friend's family bought him
a just came out TRS-80. (That was what 78-ish?). We used to spend much
time typing in games and learning the oddities of BASIC to rework them.
It was a major joy when we finally got his cassette tape player to work.
Probably why I still have a soft spot for cart tape backups. After my my
three years in the army where the closest thing to a PC was the fire
control system on my tank (actually a quite sophisticated analog
computer in the M60A3 series. I'd love to get one now and rip it apart),
I got out and went to school. There I learned the IBM PC and DOS and
WordStar (I think I might still have my copy of 3.3 somewhere. I do have
the install set for 7.0D, the very last version of Wordstar.)  I owned
first an Amiga 500 and  after the girlfriend took that over, an XT w/20
mb drive that I bought at a pawn shop for $50 bucks to run Minix on. I'd
been exposed to real computers by then in the form of Sun Workstations
and a ATT 3B2  that we had oodles of wyse terminals hanging off of.
Looking back the Sun's were probably late 2's or early 3's and they
really put the bug in me.

Many different PC Unixes and boxes later, I work for the state
government as a small agency's sysadmin of mostly NT but also a DG
Avvion.  I have currently 

Working: 
1 IPX w/ PowerUP, 64 mb, 5gb, external 4mm dat, external CD, Sun 16"
color monitor

1 3/50-511 Big old honking Sun box with a QIC tape and 5.25" Full Hieght
ESDI (70mb I think) that Solaris won't recognise. It runs the tape just
fine though. Got this for my 3/80 project. 

Sorta Working:
1 Macintosh SE/30 (No hard disk)

1 Power Mac 8500 (video trouble I have to trouble shoot today. Wife's
missing "Erics Ultimate Solitaire.") It's got a nice NEC 17" that may
end up on a Sun Blade someday...

1 3/80 16mb/1gb/Sun 20" greyscale monitor that won't sync right to it
and a dead NVRAM that doesn't want to take the info into the new one I
bought... Grump.

Not working at all
3 IBM PC/RT romp workstations with AIX 2.x. Had one going then managed
to blow away the disk while trying to add an IDE controller to it.
21" Apple fixed frequency monitor. Just stopped giving a picture one
day. Tube should be good so I keep it hoping to find the boards from one
cheaply.

If the PowerMac video is totally toast, I may be able to convice my
boss^h^h^h^h wife that the Sun Blade 100 is a really good deal, though
the price will probably also include selling/tradin/throwing as much of
the rest as she can get me to part with. OTOH, that's probaly fair (this
is a small house), though I'll want to keep the 3/80 and keep trying to
get it alive. Gotta have at least one 68k machine around :>

This is probably as good a place as any to ask a couple of questions: 
I know the Blade comes with an IDE CDROM - will an IDE CD-RW just drop
in and work? Also, who makes the best high gig IDE's these days? I saw
an IBM 75 gig for ~$350 the other day and was thinking that might be
nice in it too. And last, how nice does USB play with different devices
on the market? I've got a MS optical track ball that I've come to love
and would like to use with the Blade if it'll work.

William

--
You better watch out	What you wish for;
It better be worth it	So much to die for.
				Courtney Love