Subj : Re: 2017/2018 PC to modernize it.
To   : poindexter FORTRAN
From : tenser
Date : Wed Dec 14 2022 09:12:36

On 13 Dec 2022 at 06:47a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...
 
 pF>  pF> I think if I went retro, I'd get an old SUN box.
 pF> 
 pF>  es> We used Sun boxes at the government for a bit and I never really
 pF>  es> understood why some people are interested. What would an old SUN box 
 pF>  es> for you? Serious question?
 pF> 
 pF> Nostalgia. The hardware is beautiful to me, the SUN type 5 keyboard is
 pF> one  of the best ever made, and my first *nix gig was supporting SUN
 pF> hardware in  my server room. I had a Sparc II at my desk at the time
 pF> with a huge (at the  time) 19" monitor. While Windows and Mac were
 pF> barely multitasking, Solaris  was able to run most of my infrastructure
 pF> on a couple of boxes.

Bah. Philistines. The Type-4 keyboard was where it was at.

 pF>  es> It's like the nextcubes and stuff, they're so expensive, and I don't
 pF>  es> even know what they would bring to the table. I would love to better
 pF>  es> understand this.
 pF> 
 pF> The NeXT (hope I got the capitalization right) had display postscript
 pF> when  everyone else had jaggedy screen letters, keyboards and mice that
 pF> felt  luxurious by comparison to the cheap PC keyboards of the time, and
 pF> tools to  create apps quickly, if memory serves.

That's all correct.  The first web browser was written on
the NeXT.

It also had a pretty cool kernel architecture; it was basically
Mach underneath, with 4BSD bolted on, and they got to the point
where you could write kernel modules and drivers in Objective-C.

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