So, folks, are you getting 64-bit treatment yet? C'mon, Opteron is almost 2 years old... I'm so glad I got this workstation at the price I did. Because the promotional auction Sun's been holding on eBay is over. And I'm now an owner of a piece of equipment that is worth ~$2100
from Sun (the one with Opteron 150). Rummaging through parts, found part #370-6795 that will make it possible to install second CPU into the system. When I need to do that , I really hope Sun would clarify Dual-core CPU support in those systems. This is going to be such a sweet system then... At today's prices, $3000 byus second CPU card, extra 1GB RAM and
2 Dual-core CPUs. Finally, after all these years I got a computer that can really be upgraded. My head is full of projects (3? no, 4) that I should be pursuing, apart from regular Java development and from home video editing (finally, I can do that).
On home video editing, I'm really impressed with ease Linux (FC3 x86_64) is capable of handling full production cycle. Capturing DV using Firewire (IEEE1394), transcoding it to either MPEG2 or MPEG4, burning it to a CD-R(W), and being capable of playing it back on my Philips 642... I was waiting for this for long time. Of course, it took me couple of months to get a working software stack (3 Linux installations, 30-odd
RPMs downloaded, 50-odd packages rebuilt, not all of them successfully, not all of them only once). And I still have to do "modprobe ohci1394; modprobe raw1394" prior to being able to capture using Kino, but I'm happy anyway.
Now I came to realize that consumer electronics manufacturers stopped calling prosumer-segment-oriented DV camcorders "palmcorders". Most of my home videos, it appears, is crap that is hard to watch. No amount of image stabilization and no steady hand can give you a smooth video that we got used to from movies we rent on DVDs. Camera must be placed on a mount, not held in hand. Have to work some shooting skills now... Too bad I relized it only now. It was a bad idea to just accumulate videos on DV tapes, thus postponing their processing and viewing. Had to make the plunge earlier, make full processing cycle as soon as I got the DV camera!
