[rescue] AlphaServer ES40 in Chicago- Anyone interested?

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 04:17:09PM -0500, Scott Newell wrote:
> At 03:32 PM 3/26/2008 , Ian Finder wrote:
> >
> >But I have a real soft spot for SGI stuff, worthless or not, it's
> >beautifully designed. They seem like, arguably, the absolute high
> >point of workstation design in their era-- especially the Octanes and
> >onyx. The NeXT is pretty beautifully designed too.
> >
> >Anyone here agree on either point?
> 
> The Octane design and execution seems like a bit of a let-down:  noisy,
> collects lots of dust internally, no room for an internal cd/dvd drive,
> fragile skin, fragile compression connectors, poor TRAM reliability, early
> units had problems with the BGA devices, and to top it all off, they used a
> crummy incandescent bulb in the light bar.
> 
> I still like my low-spec unit, however.

I still have one of those too, although I upgraded mine with TRAM, RAM,
a 300mhz chip, bigger and faster disk, and a PCI cage.

That was the main desktop that my wife and I used for awhile, roughly
mid-2003 through spring 2005 (she got an iBook then), and still was my
main desktop until something in late 2006 (when failing monitors forced
me to pick between the Octane or a Mac).

Now the Octane sits with the servers (and is used by others for CPAN
testing), and I have a Fuel under my desk, which is a lot faster (but
not as cool a machine).