On Sun, Jan 16, 2000 at 09:30:22AM -0500, Dave McGuire wrote:

 >   It's nothing personal; I'm not trying to start an argument with you...
 > but I do try to bring sanity to the "that box is a few years old, my GOD
 > man, get rid of it before the world explodes!" attitude that the Wintel
 > world has so graciously created for us whenever I see it crop up.

Perhaps you're too sensitive to shadows of that attitude where it 
doesn't really exist.  I run a 3/60, IPC, a Labtam monochrome X-terminal,
I use a 386SX/33 as a diskless router box, and have at various times
played with NetBSD on a uVAX-II.  Believe me, the Wintel world and
all the stupid little attitudes which come with it don't exist in my
universe.

There comes a point, though, when it's silly to continue to push the
old stuff.  When the A21 line on your Amiga 1000's Agnus chip falls
off because you've hardware hacked it too much, it's time to throw
away the Amiga because you just can't get replacement Agnus chips 
anymore.  When you crack your Qbus backplane because you've
mounted it in too many chassis and plugged/unplugged too many cards
from it, it's time to think about whether it's really rational to 
run a uVax.  When the tape transport on your Exabyte 8200 starts
to routinely chew tapes, and every attempt to write a tape results
in the same "retry 'til the world ends" type write errors that most 
of the people you know with Exabyte 8200's have experienced, it's
time to think about whether you should use DDS or an EXB-8500 instead.
And when you have a printer with an indeterminate supply of spare
parts and consumables, which requires a device driver which is a 
cross between a postscript interpreter and a software frame buffer,
which you have no docs for, and which sucks ass when it's actually 
working anyway, it's time to seriously question whether it's the
right printer for you :-)

Incidentally, it's been a while, but I think one of the reasons Sun
called the printer a SPARCprinter is because it actually has a SPARC
in it (mouse, wanna pull it apart and find out?) 

If so, I wonder if NetBSD can be convinced to run on it? :-)

    - mark

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I tried an internal modem,                    newton@atdot.dotat.org
     but it hurt when I walked.                          Mark Newton
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