Our IT guys have been rearranging the network at work the past few weeks. I got an email asking if it was okay to change the IP address on the machine named “hugo”. Hugo is a Sun Sparcstation 10 that was assigned to me in about 1993. It runs SunOS 4.1.4 which was the last BSD-based Sun unix before the SysV-based Solaris took over. The machine has been running in a rack in our computer room with no keyboard, mouse, or display since about 2002.
I told them to go ahead, but they were unable to access it. It was responding to pings, but wouldn’t answer to telnet. There are a handful of other machines of similar vintage in the same rack so I logged in to one of them to see how long it had been since it was last rebooted. 764 days. That’s over two years running continuously without a reboot for systems that are 15 years old. (These systems are all on UPS power backed by a big old diesel generator)
Since there was no display handy to show what was going wrong I tried power cycling it. It didn’t come back. The system hadn’t been in active use for a while so extreme measures weren’t called for. Time of death was 2:51pm 6/26/08.
I just didn’t think its passing should go unremarked. How old is 15 in computer years?
Well, it’s exactly 10 Moore periods (18 months).
The Intel PENTIUM was introduced in 1993, with a
clock speed of about 60 MHz, to replace the 80486.
Microsoft Windows 3.1 roamed the earth. Solaris
had just emerged from the ooze.
Fifteen years is about what a medium sized dog will
last you,if you’re good and kind. I think computer
years are rather longer than dog years, and I’ll
guess that your SS10 is about 225 human years old.
Sounds about right. While looking for evidence of its birth date I stumbled across an old email listing its memory as 32mb.
Can I have that computer? Please??
I generally have to re-boot twice a day. But then I’m forced to use the latest PC OS…
Old enough.
I’ll tip my hat and my pint to a fallen hero.
That’s about 3 times the span of your typical computer. That’s a biblical lifespan, like Moses and Noah.