On 10/26/2015 3:42 PM, philo wrote:
On 10/26/2015 02:13 PM, Don Y wrote:

There are 10 computers in my little office but 6 of them "share"
the 7 displays (each display has an A/B selector switch so I
put one computer on the A input and another on the B input; push
a button to toggle between computers instead of having to add displays
or move cables). The other 4 machines are run headless and accessed
via telnet or via X servers. Less hassle than trying to cram all of
the functionality embodied in those 10 machines onto a fewer number
of machines (and less hassle when time comes to update one of them
and move all that software!)

I really did have to get a lot of the stuff out of the house.

I had it stashed in the basement and attic. As long as it was not in the house
proper, my wife did not complain...but it was getting too cluttered even for me.

We have no basement and no attic. And, storing things in the garage
subjects them to pretty severe temperature extremes (e.g., most
mechanisms "dry out" when stored there).

So, anything "stored" has to be stored *in* the house. This naturally
suggests only "storing" things that you are actually *using*. :

Also got rid of a few console radios...but still have plenty left.

I've been moving to get rid of all the "electronics kit" around the
house (DVD players, "stereos", speakers, doorbells, etc.) to further
reduce "clutter". E.g., I have installed speakers in the ceiling,
"up high" in the kitchen, back porch, etc. and deliver audio content
to them via network connections -- which also supply power to
the amplifiers in the speakers.

So, we can listen to music *or* the audio from the "TV/movie"
that we are watching *or* an "annunciator" that informs us
when someone is at the front door (i.e., "doorbell"). Without
having "matte black" boxes with lots of cables lying around
on "entertainment centers".

One of the machines I had at one time in addition to the Zenith Data Systems
286 I had a Z.D.S 386 with a 150 meg MFM hard drive.

I bet it cost a fortune

As I said, my 386/25's with 13M RAM and a 60M disk (and a *tiny* color
monitor) cost me $8K/each. People take for granted how inexpensive
things have become! Each of my workstations has 1T of disk and
the slowest one is 3GHz dual processor.