If you've never ventured outside of x86 land you're missing some real treats. Over the past few years I've cobbled together enough parts to make 2 Sun Microsystems computers, one a Sun Sparcstation 5, the other a Sun Ultra 2. Why are these ancient systems cool? (The Sparc 5 is 110MHz and the Ultra 2 is 200MHz) They're cool because some of the things you can do with them that you can't do with a x86 without using external software. For example: STOP + A key will bring up a prompt where you can do all kinds of cool things, such as probe all SCSI devices, check RAM to see if it's okay. You can of course do these things using software on x86, but on my Sun boxes it's built into the instructions on the system itself. I don't need to run an operating system to diagnose problems on the box -- pretty cool.
The other thing that's cool is 64-bit. Yes, my 200MHz Ultra 2 is a 64-bit box. It can hold 1GB of RAM, and it's dual processor capable. Not bad for a $20CDN ebay purchase. (I spent more buying the keyboard and mouse for it).
If you've never ventured out of x86 land, I strongly recommend you try it... just for the pleasure of trying something outside the norm.
