Sheer geekery

[altivo]

So... The Alpha is running with two external 36GB SCSI drives and using the Amiga as a console terminal. How's that for bizarre? It works though. CentOS Linux is installing as I write this, largely as a test. I'm exercising the drives and the CPU that have been out of service for at least a couple of years.

It's kind of amazing how flexible the DEC console firmware is. It recognized the Linux boot CD, switched PALCode version to OSF/1 and off it went.

CentOS is a new distro for me, and happens to be one that also has an IBM mainframe version for the System 390 machines. I still intend to use OpenVMS on this machine, but wanted to try something just to make sure all the hardware is functional. It seems to be. Even the real time clock was still running. About 20 minutes off from GMT, and for some reason thought it was 2055, but had the month and day right.

On other subjects, the cool weather over the weekend has started some trees changing colors. Sugar maples are among the first to go, with reds and oranges appearing on the topmost branches; but on the way home I noticed a couple of ash trees going to orange and gold as well. If the weather stays dry and we get a good hard frost, we may have some exciting colors this year.

No more mice caught in the kitchen yet. Maybe we got them all out. Gary rearranged the kitchen cabinets today, so I'm not going to be able to find stuff for weeks.

Oh, and I got some fun in the mail. I finally found a copy of the Associated Student Bodies compilation, the one with all the comics in a single volume. I looked at the first 30 pages or so before dinner and it's hilarious. Just as good as I was always told it would be. Shame the authors decided to end the story, but that was apparently their intent from the beginning. I'll have more to say after I finish it, I'm sure.

Comments

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

I loved that strip as well. Bits of it were a bit unbelievablem,but the underlying story was ok. Shame my time at university was not spent with such close friends. Maybe it was because I chose to commute in rather than live there.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I lived in dorms for a year and a half, then in cooperative housing, and finally in an off campus apartment. Alas, that was the 60s and 70s, and there was nothing going on that even vaguely resembled ASB. :(

However, things were changing by the time I was in graduate school. In fact, the very same dorm building I last lived in had an unofficial "gay house" (one floor of the south wing) by then. It was an old gothic stone building with tile roofs and common bathrooms, not unlike the one in ASB.

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

Alphas are...wierd. We still have some at work; have to support customers on them.

CentOS is a good distro; I have it on one machine out there. I'm tending toward Ubuntu for my next server try.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*holds up a silver cross at the mention of Ubuntu*

Actually, I like wierd as long as it works. The Amiga and its operating system were delightful and I've never gotten over the way Commodore ruined their potential with bad management and bad marketing. The power inherent in an Alpha just begs to be put to use. If this one had a graphics controller in it, I'd surely be setting up a full desktop on it.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I have all the single issues :)

And you have an Amiga? Eric Schwartz would love to hear that :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

To my regret, when we moved we had to reduce the amount of "stuff" we had, and a whole complex of Compupro 8/16 servers and peripherals went in the trash. S-100 equipment, so much of it that I kept the primary box running as a dialup BBS by scavenging parts from the surplus machinery. It ran CP/M-86. (That was salvaged from Gary's workplace, where they were going to toss it and let us have it on the condition that we take it all if we took any. That meant we ended up with a garage full of Korean terminals that emulated Televideo 920s. There were nearly two dozen of them.)

But we still have a Gimix Ghost (S-50 bus, 6800 processor, in working order if reassembled,) two TRS-80 model 4P machines with a pile of software (not just games, but the language compilers and database stuff,) two Amigas (a 2000 and a 3000T, again with a pile of software and each with a bridge card,) and half the history of the Intel/Microsoft generation, from a 286 AT-clone through a 486 monochrome notebook computer, 486 desktop, Pentium I and III systems, a Pentium laptop, and now the Alpha. The real gem of the collection, in my opinion, is a NEC "portable" from the mid-1980s. It runs CP/M-80 and has an early monochrome LCD screen with a 40x80 display and is actually quite creditable as a word processor (WordStar in ROM.) It runs off four C-cell batteries, and weighs about four pounds.