D+iz+a+n+k+Meister's Journal: Turn on your droolers girls. . .

Yeah, baby. Can't stop me now.

Here's the beginning of my hardware "museum." Basically, it's just the running computers in my house, but, if you count AMD and INTEL as different architectures, I have 4, count 'em, 4 different architectures of "modern" machines. Here's the quick tour:

• Pentium III 733 -- this was my Digital Audio Workstation for the past 4 years, and it served me very well. 256MB, 20G, Windows XP Pro, Echo Mia audio interface, Cubase 5.1, CD burner.
• Athlon 2200+ XP -- this is my budding Home Theater PC project. 1G RAM, 160G of storage, GeForece 4 Ti4600 w/128 MB, TV Wonder VE, DVD ROM. I've moved the Mia over to this computer to handle the digital audio from the DVD player to the Dolby Digital receiver, though that's not quite perfected yet.
• PowerBook G4 -- My "new" DAW. 550 mHz G4, 512 MB RAM, 20G, OSX 10.3, Airport Card (and wireless for the home), MOTU 828 audio interface. Digital Performer 4.12. I love this computer.

• The newest addition and the piece de resistance

• Compaq XP1000 Alphastation -- whoooo, it's almost too much. 1G RAM, 9.1G SCSI, DECchip 21264 EV6 Alpha processor at 500Mhz (can you feel that? huh? can ya?), ELSA video card. Can you say, "Big Iron?" (well, for a hobbyist who doesn't really spend a lot of free time with his computers). It was new in 1998. $Cost. . .haven't got a straight answer yet, but I've heard $12,000 and $40,000. Could you imagine having this thing back in '98?? Even now, I bet it could out perform a single <= 2Ghz P4 for certain jobs (not the desktop of course, but real computing). Right now it's got that Alpha NT4.0 Workstation on it. Not sure what Linux will replace that yet.

And while we're on the subject, what is up with PC's still having a BIOS??? The Alpha and the Powerbook both have firmware consoles. These modern ideas must have some useage, anyone out there know what?