Earlier this year, my wife and I decided to finish our basement. Great! I thought I could finally set up a real office. I had just one thing to do before my office would become a reality — deal with the ghosts of systems past.
Earlier this year, my wife and I decided to finish our basement. Great! I thought I could finally set up a real office. I had just one thing to do before my office would become a reality — deal with the ghosts of systems past.
Over the years I have collected a substantial pile of old hardware. Vintage Pentium II servers in 2U cases, and workstations in big desk-side cases. At one point I was sure I was going to build a cluster out of these systems, but somehow I never got around to it. When you have a big empty basement, why not fill it with old hardware and build a cluster? Isn’t that what people do these days?
In any case, these systems were eBay orphans — not even worth the shipping cost, not worth testing, etc. I had checked into donating them, but they were just a little too old and slow. In addition, the systems were “white box,” unbranded systems. (Why are they still called “white box” systems when they’re in black cases?) The only solution was the recycle bin, but that meant separating the metal from the electronics. Not a problem, with a few screw drivers, some wire cutters, and the help of my teenage daughter, we quickly had a pile of metal and a pile of components.
While we were dismantling these systems, I started thinking about the fact that these systems were pricey and fast not so long ago, and now…
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