[jwhat]

Hi Shiunbird & co,

to answer your simple question. "... besides Internet BS and online banking, what is it that you can't do with your collectibles?".

My response is:
- my paid job: Spreadsheets, Slide packs, email, voice conference calls, software design (pretty much all using Windows)
- my personal & company accounting: Quicken Accounting SW + Spreadsheets
- my open source (or sores as some would say ;-) ) + work SW development: mostly all Ubuntu Linux/FreeBSD + tiny amount of IRIX
- my entertainment: online music and music
- my web hosting and blog writing: Ubuntu Linux/FreeBSD

From my perspective computing is 80% SW / 20% HW

So SGI/IRIX has mostly been a learning environment for me and rationally, many things I originally did with SGI/IRIX, I can now also do via Linux/FreeBSD.

So, I have to accept that some of the things I set out to do with SGI/IRIX like: getting better open source build process going, fixing Fuel Power Supply and just keeping these boxes going, have to take a lower priority than other stuff.

Curently there is only very limited set of things that I can uniquely do with SGI/IRIX and not with other machines, such as read/play DAT music tapes ...

BTW, Hamei has done a lot to help the SGI community over the years, in particular with Fuel from back in Nekochan days. He also supplied me with my Fuel 800 CPU at price that was aligned with old day hobby pricing not ridiculous ebay prices (USD $12,000 for Fuel!!!, you have got to be joking),

Now all those running real world use cases like GE scanners and industrial machininary using old SGI, can pipe up, but for sure the digitial media business has now moved on.

Cheers from Oz,


jwhat/John