Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: About current ppc/ppc64 status

[Joshua Kinard]

On 08/01/2014 05:35, Joshua Kinard wrote:
> On 08/01/2014 04:52, Raúl Porcel wrote:
>>
>> Indeed! The thing was that a lot of the packages were keyworded and
>> marked stable back in the day where the arch was more popular.
>>
>> But almost all arches except amd64/x86/arm are getting less and less
>> popular:
>>
>> alpha: no new hardware in more than 8+ years
>> hppa: being phased out IIRC, and no new workstations(ie, graphics/sound)
>> in 5+ years
>> ia64: no new workstations in 10 years, new servers are expensive
>> ppc*: new workstations are expensive
>> sparc: no new workstations in 7+ years, new servers expensive
>
> Who says they have to be new?  Sometimes, the fun is in the old hardware of
> yore.  I found out last week that sparc32 is still quasi-alive, though it
> doesn't appear to have any mainstream kernel maintainers.
>
> ia64, go search on eBay for old SGI Altix/Prism gear.  There's a metric ton
> of Altix units being offloaded lately.  There was one listing a few weeks
> ago that had 10-20 Altix 350 servers, dual or quad CPU, for ~$90 per server.
>  Even saw an SGI Prism a few days ago (which is just an ia64 variant of the
> Tezro).

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SGI-ALTIX350-with-Dual-1-5GHZ-SL7ED-2GB-Memory-No-Drives-/161373099998

Up to six SGI Altix 350's available, 2x 1.5GHz ia64 CPUs and 2GB memory.  I
believe these can be NUMA-linked, too, if anyone can find the cables.  $85 +
$35 s&h apiece.  If my shelf wasn't already crowded with a tape autolibrary,
SGI Origin 300, and a SunFire V240, I'd probably consider grabbing one.  For
anyone in the US, that's a hard price to beat.

-- 
Joshua Kinard
Gentoo/MIPS
kumba@g.o
4096R/D25D95E3 2011-03-28

"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us.  And
our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."

--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic