Chris enters the room, gazes upon seven orcs, draws his sword, and opens the can of worms.
Ooooh .. Philosophy. I love philosophy. :) Good philosophy starts with good questions. I love some of the newer hardware, too, but even Raspberry Pi is not yet 64 bit, is it? The dell computer that I'm working with at the moment is my case study - it's not slow at all. Am I alone in thinking that our technology is trying to leave humanity behind before it is truly not useful anymore? Unlike HAM radio operators, are you one of those crazy people who think we're somehow safe from disaster on planet Earth? I think this universe has much more in store for us. I also like to wring out every last bit of use from stuff. I also grind old screwdrivers that are "worn-out". I'll feel more comfortable when our high school grads understand EcE and computer manufacturing upon graduation. If we need faster computers to replace humans, what's the point? Video games? Meta? AI? What about baseball, Frisbee, stage productions, and Human Intelligence? Can an old 32 bit machine do modern encryption for telecommunications? Why are we still paying so much for phone service? Why aren't our high school grads capable of re-soldering components from these old boards and assembling them into something better and rewriting the software? So, I think it's a worthwhile discussion that I know many thought was settled as they gaze across fully stocked Wal Mart computer departments and newegg query results. If for no other reason, shouldn't we pry the specs out of the hands of Dell and others to understand and reconfigure and reprogam their machines? Or, are they afraid of what we'll discover? My working hypothesis is that if we remove what was put in there to do things we don't know about, these machines will speed-up considerably. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip On 11/2/22, Christopher Schultz <ch...@christopherschultz.net> wrote: > John, > > On 10/27/22 11:03, John Dale (DB2DOM) wrote: >> Does anyone know of a report detailing how much of this older hardware >> is still out there and floating around? > > You mean like a list of all pieced of hardware ever sold and never > scrapped? > > I think that would be practically impossible. > > I have a Palm 7 on a box in my office that has never been inventoried by > anybody and could possibly be plugged back in at any moment. There are > probably warehouses of stuff like what worldwide and you never know when > someone is going to plug-in any one of those devices and start playing > with it again. > >> Big picture: >> It's a lot of computer power in the event manufacturing hits a hiccup, >> I wouldn't want to be caught flat-footed until it could be >> re-established. > > Are you suggesting that Linux should not drop support for i486 > architecture because if new machines aren't available due to > supply-chain issues, we might all have to re-rack 486s to keep our > services running? That sounds insane. We would simply do without. I'd > sooner put my old mobile phones into service supporting my applications > than an old i486. They are more powerful and reliable, and use less > electricity. > > There's a reason Linus wants to kill i486 support: > > "At some point, people have them as museum pieces. They might as well > run museum kernels." - Linus Torvalds > >> I like to build distilled portable stuff for that reason. I think >> DB2DOM could run on some really old versions of all of our favorite >> software if needed. > Great. I'm sure the transactions will only take a couple of seconds to > commit. No problem ;) > > -chris > >> On 10/26/22, Christopher Schultz <ch...@christopherschultz.net> wrote: >>> Shawn, >>> >>> On 10/26/22 00:14, Shawn Heisey wrote: >>>> The Linux kernel dropped support for 386 and 486 CPUs some time ago. >>> >>> I was reading about this today, actually. Linux is currently actively >>> advocating for dropping 486 support, so it must still be in there. >>> >>> -chris >>> >>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org >>> For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tomcat.apache.org >>> >>> >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org >> For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tomcat.apache.org >> > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tomcat.apache.org > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tomcat.apache.org
