Re: 1,000 year backward compatability of tools

I have a few "antique" computers.  The first Compaq, A very early
Sun SPARC 1. a Mac before they offered a hard drive and others
Had a VAX too,  but no place to store it and some guy offered me 
$1,500 for the tape drive...

These machines are only worth keeping if you still have the old
software that they used to run.  If you load a current version
the machine looses it's value as a "museum piece".  Most people
don't want new versions of anything on these old machines and
would be far happier to find a 12 year old IRIX CD set then
a working gcc 3.x

I did try putting current OS on the old SPARC just to see if it
would work.  From power on it took __over an hour__ to get into
an xterm window. Booting and loading X11 took that long.



Bruce Korb wrote:
> Charles Wilson wrote:
>
>
> > I think the "winning" argument was as follows:
> >   for archaic systems whose shell does not support shfuncs, 'somebody'
> > should create a snapshot of bash with a frozen autotool version....
>
>
> That's the argument that has been put forth over and over for years.
> I couldn't remember if it was finally accepted or not.  It was deemed
> insufficient for so many years....
>
>
> > Recall that just because NEW autotools will/may use shell functions,
> > that doesn't retroactively break all existing packages that are already
> > "out there".  So, the poor Ultrix user will only need "bootstrap bash"
>
>
> > However, AFAIK, nobody has actually created that "bootstrap bash"
> > package, or if they have, it has not been widely publicized.
>
>
> That's because the few hobbiests maintaining the museum pieces
> manage to cope and all the remaining antiquarians are either
> theoretical or silent.  The people speaking up seem to be those
> who worry about the theoreticals instead of people with real problems....
> "It's time to move on."