User:Skeezics

Howdy! I've only been volunteering at Free Geek for a short time, but hope to be more active in sorting out non-PC, non-Mac stuff - that is, my interest is in helping to identify old Unix boxes (Sun, SGI, DEC, NeXT, HP, Tektronix, or other "workstation" type machines) and divert them from the recycling room to good homes. There are quite a few people that still use, refurbish, collect, and maintain older non-x86, non-Intel, non-Mac machines; Sun hardware, in particular, is very well supported in the open source universe, running a wide variety of operating systems including Linux, *BSD, Solaris, etc.

I've been programming and/or doing systems administration since I was 12 - since the days before TCP/IP, when the ARPAnet was still in its infancy. I repair and maintain a sprawling collection of older hardware, from the very obscure (PERQ) to the very large (Cray). I would love to open a computer museum in Portland someday... I've been working with Sun kit since 1990 or so, and with Ted Havelka, Zach Brown and Aaron Grier have been helping to identify and inventory much of the oddball stuff currently piled up in nooks and crannies around the Free Geek warehouse. It's my hope that we can save a lot of these machines from destruction, and I'm hoping to contribute as much as I can to the "knowledge pool" at Free Geek, so that Sun/SGI or other non-mainstream machines can be properly classified and not just tossed.

Like, if a big ol' PDP-10 showed up one day, I'd be all over that... :-)

skeezics 17:24, 3 Jul 2006 (PDT)