[ILUG] Ultrix/Linux

[Paul Curtayne]

Hi,

I have been offered 2 old machines.

Details I've been given:

One is a dec station 5000/260, the other is a 240. Both have 128MB
Ram, and 2 GB SCSI disks, and 19" RGB monitors, and have 10Mb net
cards. I think they are 90 MHz machines, and have 24x CD roms.
They are running Ultrix RISC v4.5, with X etc.

Now, I've never used a machine like these. Anyone have experience and
opinions of these? Would you buy 2 of these for 400 quid???/

The guy who is selling them wasn't sure if Linux has been ported to
this kind of machine, but I have found at least one site with
instructions on how to do it:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~vhouten/mipsel/install.html

Not being the most confident Linux guy in the world, I would be afraid
of messing up 2 perfectly working machines.
Anyone ever do this? How hard was it? Is it worth it? would you leave
Ultrix alone (OK i know this list might lean a litle towards Linux
:-> ).

It seems like a worthwhile project to learn about stuff, and these
machines would be still able to do quite a bit, I'd say. Possibly make
a great file server, or psossibly  a development machine??

Paul