What's it all about, Alfie?

OK... so I'm trying to get over the loss of barney and see what's coming up for me. I have several possibilities, but I'm not sure what path I'll be taking.

If money weren't an object, I'd simply get a better, newer sgi box. There are the Octanes which are reasonably priced and could have dual processors with graphics that are just as good. But if money is no object, then the new Fuel or even better yet, the Octane2 workstations are nice.

But money is an object... a scarce one.

So I have to realize that with my domain being DNS-ed at easyDNS I get all the things I really need without having to keep barney alive:

• I can have www.TheManFromSPUD.com hosted on sparky with a redirect to the specific URL. barney used to host this site, but with it moved, there's no need for him.
• I can do all my developing on sherman my iBook as it's got apache, PHP, PostgreSQL on it and that's all the development tools I used on barney.

So in the end, it's not really even necessary to replace barney. But as a collector, I feel a keen sense of loss.

I spent some time yesterday looking at the auctions on eBay looking for what things were going for these days. I was surprised to see that there were as many Octane power supplies on the market as Indigo² power supplies. This doesn't lead me to believe that they fixed their power problem. Also, let's face it... any reasonable Linux box these days can beat an aging sgi box. I was collecting it for the cache value, not any real need to have it.

So I was checking out other options such as the ultra-reliable SPARC 20. As it turns out you can get one of them for under $200 with dual processors, plenty of memory and lots of stuff. Not bad, but I already have a SS20, and it's fine and loaded with lots of goodies. So I don't really need one, and the collectible value is marginal as I already have one.

I looked at the HP workstations, and I know that I can get all the freeware (gcc, etc.) I need for one of them, but I'm less excited about having an HP box than I used to be. I've certainly thought about getting a nice Linux box, but that's real money (>$2000) and I'm not ready for that yet.

So it looks like I'll take barney off the desktop and put his parts in storage. If it's possible to bring him back later, I'll probably try and do that. But for now, it's time to say goodbye and realize that as a collector of working computers, it's time to move on and close the book on barney.

I want to love sgi stuff. I really do.

I've had barney my Indigo² for a long time. Heck, I've even replaced the entire box with a newer, updated one and kept the name but recently I've wondered at what cost.

You see, my original Indigo² was an R4400/250MHz box off of eBay and it cost $1495.00 at the time. I thought it was a bargain. And it was. Then that box went through 3 power supplies - at $300 a piece, and it wasn't so much of a great deal. I had fans blowing on it, I tried another $175 High Impact video card set - no luck, the original wasn't bad, and in the end realized that this just wasn't the best box to use.

So I got an R10000/195MHz for another $800 and thought my problems would be over.

They weren't.

The power supply started to go and I talked to the used SGI reseller that I had used for two of the power supplies and the new R10k box, and he said he didn't have any more power supplies around. I'm not the least bit surprised.

For all the wonderful technology that the Indigo² is, I'm now convinced that they just can't run in normal conditions. What I mean is that in the standard, American home, with air conditioning, these boxes just get too hot and they take themselves out.

So I have two perfectly functioning boxes with great capabilities but no power to them. This is very frustrating to say the least.

I've taken out the drives to lower the power consumption, and I've removed 2/3^rds of the RAM to again, lower power consumption, but in the end, once the power supply starts to go it's a gonner and it's only a matter of time before it goes again.

In the end I have to conclude that while it's been a blast, it's over.