Am I "IRL Trolling" Craigslist Free Stuff?

[Animal Farm Pig]

I recently moved. I'm now at my old apartment cleaning and clearing out some sold stuff. Some of that old stuff is sort-of antique, collectible computer gear. I'm going to be moving around a lot in the coming months, and I don't want to keep moving it, so I'm trying to give it away... and failing.

I put up ads on my local craigslist offering it for free. I thought I was clear in the original ad that I wanted to give it to someone who knows what it is and can give it a good home. My phone started ringing off the damn hook. Nobody had any fucking clue what I was actually giving away.

Here's what I'm offering:


Sun Enterprise 420R -- 4 x 450 MHz UltraSPARC, full of memory, no disks, not tested
Sun Ultra 2-- 2 x 300 MHz UltraSPARC, some memory, no disks, used for parts for my other Ultra 2
SPARCServer & SPARCStation 20's-- SPARCServer has 2 x 75 HyperSPARCs, 512 MB RAM, 2 x 9 GB SCSI2, TGX+, CD-ROM, HME. It might have an old Debian or NetBSD install on it. The SPARCStation is a spare parts chassis.
SGI Indigo2 -- Purple, 250MHz R44k, 64 MB RAM, SolidImpact, 4.3 GB SCSI, IRIX 6.2, haven't booted it for a while

If you actually know this kind of equipment, everything here makes total sense. If you're not into it, very little of this will make any sense at all. If you don't have any fucking clue what any of this shit means, how the hell do you think you can use it!?

So, when I get calls, the first thing I ask is, 'Have you ever used Sun or Silicon Graphics machines?' Most people say, 'Uhh.....'. A couple dipshits have said something along the lines of, 'Oh, my mom/brother/cousin/etc. is real good with computers.' So, my new strategy is to say, 'Well, you know they're gonna need a Type 5 keyboard, a 13w3 to HD15 adapter, and they can't use a Linux 2.6 kernel because it isn't supported on 32-bit SPARC and there are bugs in the esp2 driver in 2.6, and the newer FreeBSD 7 & 8 kernels are too big for the bootloader...'

That's handled it so far. I might have someone who actually knows his shit and wants the SparcStations.

Still, I feel kind of bad. I put shit up for free, and then when people call tell them that I won't give it to them. Still, I think they're assholes for calling. It seems like I could have just written a bunch of random numbers and letters in the ad and still got calls.

[Invincible Summer]

Craigslist seems to attract a lot of total dumbasses. I posted an ad for a mountain bike and gave all the specs, with a picture, and I got an email that was all

"Yo how many speeds n does it have shox"

[¿Que?]

and they can't use a Linux 2.6 kernel because it isn't supported on 32-bit SPARC and there are bugs in the esp2 driver in 2.6, and the newer FreeBSD 7 & 8 kernels are too big for the bootloader...'
This is basically all I understood. Although I don't know what an esp2 driver does, I'd imagine it's part of the core OS. In any case, I think, in spite of my ignorance, I could talk you into giving it to me. :)

But I don't live anywhere near you, so it's a moot point. :(

EDIT: I could still use the older kernels, though right? I mean, if I'm not mistaken they're pretty easily accessible on the internets.

[Animal Farm Pig]

Alright, with some strongly worded messages at the top of the ad, I managed to cut down the calls a lot. Also, I found a good home for my gear! :D The guy is on his way over now.


This is basically all I understood. Although I don't know what an esp2 driver does, I'd imagine it's part of the core OS. In any case, I think, in spite of my ignorance, I could talk you into giving it to me. :)

But I don't live anywhere near you, so it's a moot point. :(

EDIT: I could still use the older kernels, though right? I mean, if I'm not mistaken they're pretty easily accessible on the internets.

Nice to meet another person who appreciates good hardware on RevLeft. :D

2.6 doesn't work at all on the SparcStations.

2.6 should work on the Ultra 2, but there's the problem with the esp2 (SCSI) driver. It's not even so much a problem with the driver as a problem with the driver when used on the Debian installer CD. I'd try a different distro, except Debian is the only one with decent SPARC support.

So, on the Ultra 2 (the one that I'm keeping, not the one I'm giving away), I run a weird unholy combination of Sarge (http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/) (with 2.4 kernel) and Sid (http://www.debian.org/releases/unstable/) (with more modern packages). It's kind of crazy, but it works.

I've tried rolling my own 2.6 kernel from vanilla kernel.org source, and it seems to actually work. The problem is that the SPARC bootloader only supports kernels up to a certain size (don't remember the exact size). This wouldn't actually be a problem, except that the root partition lives on two hard drives LVM'ed together, so LVM needs to be compiled into the kernel, but doing so makes the kernel too big.

I've tried NetBSD on it, and it works okay, but I prefer Debian. FreeBSD would probably also work, but compiling packages would take a looooong time.