I see little advantage in keeping the old hardware around anymore. I think I still have some old ISA cables downstairs in a box - high time to acknowledge to myself that I will NEVER use those again.
It's somewhat similar to the reason people (like me) restore and drive old cars, also despite the "noise and power consumption" (and some happen to like the former ;-) --- they're relatively simple and well-understood.
Likewise, there is also a very active retrocomputing community, although a lot of it goes back much older than 486 or even PC --- the C64, ZX, and the like continue to have plenty of new software written for them.
[1] and if you ask for a datasheet or any more details about it on their "excellent community" (to quote some), you basically get told politely to f'off: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=163420
Unless these companies manage to break away from their bad habits, I can't see ARM servers gaining any sort of market share outside of big companies.
For some, they'd rather not see a useful machine take up space in a landfill, leech toxins into the environment, and simultaneously drive unneeded demand for the production of yet another computer.
I guess one would have to do the math and figure out what the environmental impact of a new Pi 3 B+ is.
Or they could figure out if the increased electrical cost of running an old machine over x number of years is greater than the expense of purchasing and powering a new Pi 3 B+. Where I live, I could run a 486 for a heck of a long time on $60, especially when you factor in that the Pi still needs to be powered, too.
Alternative uses for a 486 case - make a planter box, bird house or a bee hive. https://www.instructables.com/id/Computer-case-beehive/
Alternative uses for 486 mobo - incorporate it into furniture design, cut it up to create a wind chime, create stuff like that to avoid the landfill. :)
Apparently it was my old team fortress computer. So like 15 years.
Fixing the computer keeps my dad busy. Seriously he has nothing better to do.
Solder went lead-free (and electronics in general went ROHS) so when it's buried in landfills it doesn't seep lead or other hazardous materials into groundwater.
There is zero chance of lead solder getting hot enough to skip the liquid phase of matter and go straight to a gas in a 486.
https://inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2018/12/c...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/schill/albums/7215762935517133...
An ISA/IDE cable is just copper ribbon cable using .1" spacing, which is what the GPIO header pin spacing is on a Pi. There is a pin blocked on the standard ide female connector but that pin is just one of many ground connectors on the Pi. Clip it off or dremel/drill out the hole as needed. Jeez, now I just convinced myself that I MIGHT use the cable some day. Thanks a lot! >:/ Was trying to throw it away.
There's a PCI bridge for the raspberry pi 4, if for whatever reason one would want to do such a thing. Drivers might be a problem if the card's linux support sucks but that's kind of a separate issue. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-4-pci-express...
EDIT: Oh, maybe your point was that the reason to keep the 486 around is to use old ISA/PCI cards - sorry, I mentioned ISA cables in OC so thought you were replying to that. Yeah, point taken, but I'm skeptical that there are any but the most narrow cases where the function of an old ISA/PCI card can't be replicated/emulated with better performance on a Pi. I mean, trying to think of the edge cases - an old SCSI RAID controller? Maybe some proprietary industrial controller stuff? but yeah. My comment about junking the old stuff was just a criticism of the inclination I think all of us nerds have to get that old box back into production use at home. I think there are very few - if any - cases where that makes sense anymore.
I have all sorts of ISA cards that have no alternative (other than for huge expense) or software. Quite a few IEEE-488, many other weird interfaces, DSP dev boards, one of a kind/prototype boards, other stuff. I have boxes of the stuff, and know hundreds of people who have the same needs. We have mailing lists.
No, a PI can't do that. No it can't emulate that. No it's not as generally useful as you think unless all you care about is stuff written in the last 5 years.
I don't doubt there are specialized boards out there that have no modern functional equivalent (esp. industrial apps), but you CAN connect to stuff using GPIB (IEEE 488) with a Pi, so that's not one of them.
If legacy OS/app support is your issue I'm not sure it's going to give you much value booting your 486 with a linux distro today (what the post was about, and the context in which my comment was made about the Pi).
If you're locked into the 486-generation hardware interfaces and the Windows/DOS software platform, and CAN'T leverage hardware interface bridges and software emulators on modern systems with horsepower to spare, you're talking about the edge cases of the edge cases.
My point was never directed at the edge cases of the edge cases. I said "I see little advantage in keeping the old hardware around". The rare edge cases are represented by that "little advantage" I CAN see. But it's little, man. Most situations where a 486 would offer any utility today, particularly on Linux but not only that, a $50 3-watt Pi can do the job better, cheaper and cleaner.
Those things are the embodiment of "generally useful" - A low power, small form-factor, relatively high-power compute platform with an easy to use GPIO header and libraries for many languages, able to leverage most Debian packages (including DOS emulators). I admit it doesn't meet 100% of planetary need, but it's right up there with anti-lock brakes, microwavable meals, and stretchy pants in my book. Convince me otherwise.
(There's also the T620 Pro, but those are going for a bit more these days since they make good home routers when you add a quad gig-e card...)
I think this is definitely in keeping with the hacker spirit and belongs on the front page for that reason alone.