[rescue] AIX N40 Tadpole

[Ian Finder]

Ugh. And what do you think they charter school even did with them? I'll bet
they had no idea what to do and once they found out they couldn't run
Windows 98 they probably eCycled them...


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 8:59 AM, Justin Haynes <justin at justinhaynes.com>wrote:

> Rescue -
>
> If I could go back and do this over again, I would.  I used to work at
> University of Houston and at the time was the property custodian for my
> department.  As such I could go to property management and pull items from
> storage that were mostly ultimately destined for recycling or various other
> non-profit or privileged organizations who could come and take their pick.
>
> There was a pile of Tadpole N40 laptops and I checked out a couple.  I
> finally checked them back in, thinking maybe I'd buy one at auction.  But
> before that could happen, a "charter school" came and took them.  It was a
> school later mentioned on the radio as one of many who were taking
> advantage of public funds and leaving disadvantaged kids with less of an
> education than the public alternative.
>
> At any rate, they ran AIX and and almost no battery life at all, but they
> represented an interesting slice of time at what I read as the very end of
> the UNIX wars where there was a market, but not much of one, for small
> laptops that matched the architecture of big iron.
>
> Does anyone have one of these today?  I'd be interested in preserving one.
> My SPARCbook 3gx is a delight.  I don't use it often, but I will preserve
> it and keep it alive, bootable and usable.  I'd do the same for the N40.
>
> I run OpenBSD on the 3gx but I have all the media for Solaris.  I know I
> could always put Solaris back on the box.  But I think it is a testament to
> the architecture that a software project can choose to maintain a modern OS
> for an older architecture and that it can still be usable today.
>
> If I had an N40, I'd keep AIX on it, because I think this platform is so
> rare as to be really dififcult to find.  (Any disagreements here?)  If
> anyone wants to make space who has one, I'd be interested in preserving.
>
> Thanks!,
>
> Justin.
> _______________________________________________
> rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
>



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   Ian Finder
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   ian.finder at gmail.com