Antiquated Hardware Revitalized, Not Happy

April 1st, 2008 by Pawn Showers

BeOS is sweeping the globe as it breathes new life into our old, outdated hardware. This new trend is keeping computers out of the landfills, and into the homes of consumers. Not everyone is happy, however, and some see it as unfair to the retired hardware.

"I served my time!", says one Dell 386 tower. "I worked hard running Windows 3.1, and I think I deserve to enjoy my retirement. Those new fangled dual core babies don't understand what it was like working without CPU fans. Did you know that I still have .03 ounces of mercury on my motherboard?!?! There weren't safety guidelines back then, you booleaned with the hardware they gave you."

Experts on the matter argue that although the older hardware did work harder, and accomplished less -- they paved the way for protected mode computing that dominates the market today. If it weren't for the IRQ problems, memory address conflicts, and proprietary hardware of the past, we wouldn't have many of the standard equipment we use every day.

A Packard Bell desktop workstation was also questioned, but locked up during the interview and was unable recover from the blue screen of death. BeOS Journal sends its condolences to the computer's peripherals.
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experix on BeOS

On April 1st, 2008 experix says:

I got experix working under BeOS last night. It's extremely alpha. First I had to translate the kernel code into COBOL so I could run it as a BeOS process. Then, the most important hack was setting HZ=0.001.

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experix is NOT for dummies

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Shawn Powers has a message for hardware vendors. Listen up!

From the Magazine

August 2008, #172

There's nuttin like a Cool Project to give you some relief from the summer heat, so get out your parka cuz we got a bunch of em. First up is the BUG, not a bug, The BUG. It's got a GPS, camera and more, in a hand-sized package that's user programmable. The BUG does everything. It's both a floor wax and a dessert topping. Get one now. Need a software version of a Swiss Army knife? Take a look at Billix, and don't leave home without it. Then, chew on this one, an X server on a Gumstix device driving an E-Ink display. Need more storage? How about 16 Terabytes? Can do.

And, of course, we have the usual cast of characters: Marcel, Reuven, Dave, Kyle, Doc, plus the new kid on the block Shawn Powers. But it doesn't stop there: build a MythTV box on a budget, build your own GIS system, set up the tools to monitor your enterprise and more. Finally, remember The War of the Worlds? Now you can play too.

Read this issue