Scarfing old kit

[gdt]

I like to teach computing. Some demo kit is useful. Those old 5.25in hard disks are big enough to show people what a splindle, cylinder and track actually are. It's easy to see that moving the disk head is going to take a lot of time.

When teaching networking an old hub is useful. Every port see every bit, so it's easy to drop Wireshark into the middle of a connection and have it decode the protocols. Also useful for teaching networking is some old thinnet coax with AUIs and drops -- nothing shows quite so clearly why we moved to structured cabling and hubs.

I show people an old 1RU hub. Most people have no idea what professional networking equipment looks like.

Also useful is dynamips and dynagen, emulators for the Cisco 7200 hardware, a classic router. You need to know how Cisco IOS works, and dynamips is a painless way to built a small network and get that experience. Juniper has olive, which does something similar and is well worth a look by those familiar with IOS just to see another take on what a router command line should look like. If Juniper has any sense it will release Olive formally, since people's fear of their different (but far superior) configuration technique is one of the factors limiting Juniper's penetration into non-ISP businesses.

If people have a stack of old USB floopy drives around I'd love to scarf four of those. Nothing would show more clearly how the various RAIDs work.