Time flies like an arrow, machines better not fly
The machineroom, as we know it, has already known six different locations, and
has been packed in storage three times (once during four months).
There are pictures for three of these locations (a fourth one coming soon).
The locations were:
The locations were:
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An appartment in Valbonne, until 1999.
The beginning of the machineroom. There were about 5 machines (in addition to three PC computers) when I relocated from there. (There are no pictures of that time.)
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An appartment in Clermont-Ferrand, from late 1999 to late 2000.
The beginning of the steady growth of my collection. The machines were first set on two tables in the living room, and then moved to a smaller room when I bought my first set of shelves. When I relocated 13 months later, I had about 40 machines. (There are no pictures of that time.)
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A larger appartment in Clermont-Ferrand, from late 2000 to mid 2005.
The first real machineroom setup, with about 16 square meters and four sets of shelves. When the machineroom went into storage in June 2005, there were about 120 machines to pack.
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An appartment in Toulouse, from late 2005 to late 2010.
An even larger machineroom (over 20 square meters), which grew to a ludicrous set of six sets of shelves, and - despite my efforts to stop collecting more machines once I had reached 100 - over 150 machines when I packed it again in 2010... after giving about 15 machines away.
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A house in Orgerus, from late 2010 to late 2016.
I faced a real challenge as the machineroom would be cut in half to about 12 square meters, and a lower ceiling. Setting up the machineroom required careful thinking, and unlike the previous instances of the machineroom, not all machines could be stored in the machineroom; about 15% of them had to be stored in an attic, with the occasional shuffle in order to bring needed machines in the machineroom and no longer needed machines to the attic.
When the machineroom was packed again to go in storage for a few weeks while I was relocating again, one of the movers told me: ``I have moved companies many times, yet this is the first time I see that many computers in the same place.'' -
Another house back in Clermont-Ferrand, from late 2016 onwards.
For the first time, the machineroom would not be set up on the ground floor of the house or appartment, but in a spacious mezzanine of about 17 square meters - not as large as in Toulouse, but enough to theoretically store all my collection. The mezzanine is also connected to a spare room which I will use as storage for my countless boxes of spare parts, yet still hopefully have enough room to allow people to sleep inside, should there be too many guests.
However, having decided to keep my main desk on ground floor, I decided to keep the few large machines I seldom use, but use as extra desk space, on the ground floor as well.
The machine room is still being set up, some pictures are already available.