> > Personally, to keep it straight, I differentiate > between the more recent > > IBM as pSeries and the older as RS/6000. I can't > afford a pSeries but I > > can afford a 7026-H50 (dual 604e 332, expandable > to 4-way), 256 MB > > expandable to 3GB, three PCI busses over 9 slots. >
wow, cool... sounds like a nice machine to me. > > > > As far as d-i, I've never been able to get d-i x86 > to boot on anything > > I've got (I guess its too old, the most recent > being a Pentium II) and > > end up using 3.0 boot-floppies then either CD, > floppies, or the > > basedebs.gz on a Zip, followed by an update. > > > > Do you know how the performance of dual 604e > compares with Pentium 4 from > > a user perspective? I haven't found benchmark > comparisions. I'm > > It will be abysmally slow, but usable, it depends > what you want to do with it. > it is something like almost 10 years old technology > after all. just for the record, 604s were use in mars rovers and have proven amazeing hardy and durable and dependable. (i believe they did some work on that but they were suprise). now are used, finally 10 years old in automotive products, now they are proven reliable enough. it seemed that they were to the original powerpc as the g4&5 to the g3, they had potential. imho, the performance has a lot to do with model the programming to fit the machine. new compilers should be making a difference, for g4/5, but what about these older machines ? would this new unified architecture actually make use of multiprocessor since they are in the g5s ? if i work right it could be making video and all. especially with double bus structure there would be the throughput there to have it go in the background. of course, it would still far slower than a g5, but if you are only working at video tape resolutions, maybe 16 bit color, not at film resolution, that like maybe only 10% of the data size. especially if you can find a compressor input card. > > it will beat the pants off x86 hardware from the > same era though. > > Seriously, you would be better off getting an used > powermac of some sort, with > 1ghz-ish cpu, or one of the genesi pegasos machines. > i hope enough people buy the ODW that genesi can stay in business and put out their "g5" model, but as it is i am really much excited about the efika board.why, because they took a processor core even older than the 604 and speeded it up to like a later g3 (ddr ram, 133mhz bus). i wonder how fast this thing really is. if a person were handy enough they could put together a custom notebook with spare parts probably (some crazy sculptor in my neighborhood did this from a mac mini - says he saved himself $500) for those less handy or experience, you can get a more recent laptop and rebuild your desktop and get along pretty well that way, maybe. > > In general, what is your wisdom of using an older > (though still PCI) > > RS/6000 for usual desktop stuff? (please ignore > the physical box size > > issue). an issue for me as a visual artist (which i have really lost track of lately) is how well could g4 be coerced into acting like g5, ie simulating 64 bit via altivec. because 24/32 bit color ends up looking like 15 or less once i am done with a picture, all too often, yet my ancient scanner does do 48 or better, i can process only limited ways,especially without altivec support. or else multiprocessing could do the trick. i know this has been sort of a pipe dream for a long time, however that is to me sort of the story with GNU/Linux, how here things can be work out over the long haul, and i mean like a decade time frame. > > I hope the above will give some replies. > > Friendly, > > Sven Luther > hope i am not intruding. i do like the spirit of old computers continuing potential. and i like the idea of building more effective software for them, that is some sort of stable development space. brian > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
