More retrocomputing stuff!

So, I’ve been messing around with my IIGS some more lately.

First, I got it running as a web server, using a serial connection to my server. Great. But, the fastest connection I could get that was stable was 38400 baud. Eww.

I might’ve blogged a while back about the problems the motherboard had, that it couldn’t accept any expansion cards. Long story short, I had gotten an a2RetroSystems Uther ethernet card for it, and tried it… and nothing. It wouldn’t connect. Tried everything, even tried a diagnostic software disk image that a2RetroSystems sent me, and it wouldn’t init the card.

After doing a bunch of diagnostics on the machine… I figured it out. The damned motherboard was fucked. 😡

Anyway, yesterday, a new IIGS (that was actually a year older) arrived. It had a dead power supply, but I had a good one in my old IIGS… and this machine works perfectly. 😀

Interestingly, the video signal is clearer and stronger on this one, too. Not sure what that’s about, but I’m sure as hell not complaining.

So, the IIGS is now online, with an ethernet card. Still is using floppies as the only storage, though.

It is accessible at http://bhtooefr.ath.cx:6502/index.htm in its current state, however.

But, that’ll eventually be remedied. I’m going to get a Focus IDE controller from 16 Sector (and I’ve already got a CF to 44-pin IDE adapter on the way, and I’ll be getting a 1 GiB CF card soon,) and some form of 4 MiB RAM card.

Then, I think, except for an accelerator, this system will be complete. 🙂 (And I may never get an accelerator, because they go for stupid money used…)


Well…

Holy crap it’s been a long time since I’ve made an entry…

Where do I begin…

Well, last day at my job was June 13… that sucked. Oh well, I’ll be able to get more experience this way…

Got new wheels for the Miata – Konig Heliums. 15×6.5, 11.4 lbs per wheel. They look great. 🙂

Palm OS web browsers suck the big one. And Opera Mini runs like ass in WebSphere. How do I know this? I got a Centro. Much better than that dying Sanyo.

Today, I got a Selectric II. Man, that thing is fun to type on. For some reason, the 6, 7, 8, and 9 keys don’t spring back up properly, but other than that, it’s in perfect working order.

Oh, and not sure that the sidebar is updating properly, but I got a Twitter account… check it out at http://twitter.com/bhtooefr 🙂



My crazy opinion on computers and education

I should probably state my qualifications before I begin this post… I work as the computer technician for a K-12 private school. I don’t work directly with the students, but I DO work with the teachers in implementing their educational needs on our computers. Also, it wasn’t that long ago that I was a student myself.

I personally feel that modern computers are the wrong approach for educating our students. Continue reading “My crazy opinion on computers and education”


Just for fun… even though it’s been spread already… more 09f9 (and 455f) action!

 

Put this image in your signature on the forums that you’re on that allow it, and spread the 09f9 and the 455f.

This was inspired by badmouth.net’s Free Speech flag, but with some differences. Due to the second AACS key being found, I decided to append it to the end, with 0x00 separating the two keys.

Therefore, the constituent colors are:

#09f911 #029d74 #e35bd8 #4156c5 #635688 #c00045 #5fe104 #22ca29 #c4933f #95052b #792ab2

(Joining segment is bolded)

Code to put this in your signature on most forums:

[img]http://bhtooefr.org/images/circumventiondevice.png[/img]

For some other forums:

[img=http://bhtooefr.org/images/circumventiondevice.png][/img]

HTML:

this signature would be a circumvention device if you could see images


Got a new server…

We decided at my work to throw out a bunch of our old P3 parts machines – after all, we’re going to FINALLY be phasing these things out.

So, I had to grab one, as my server, bhtooefr.ath.cx, has been down for quite a while due to a broken power supply (and the P3-700 wasn’t really happy with the load, anyway… especially when it was overheating. Damn ultraportable laptops when held at 100% load… ;))

The new server’s a Dell Dimension 2100. Don’t laugh, the mobo’s made by Intel. No optical drive, but who cares… I’ve got enough optical drives lying around. No hard drive, either, but I’ve got a laptop HDD adapter lying around somewhere, to use the old server’s 40 GB drive. If push really comes to shove, I use the 8.4 GB drive I’ve got lying around, and be damn judicious with the space.

Oh, and I will be running Linux here (the old server ran Windows 2000.) I’ve decided, since I’ve gotten rather familiar with Ubuntu on my laptop, I’ll run Ubuntu Server on this.

FTP and remote desktop services WILL be restored soon for all your downloading and proxy dodging pleasure. Just wait a bit.  😉

Oh, and I’ll have SSH access for when VNC is overkill, and I might even get fancy and implement a VPN so you can REALLY dodge proxies.


Bike!

So, this is ANOTHER ride, all of $30.

Some other stuff, and it’s good to ride now! 😀

BTW, 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.



I am such a nerd.

That’s my cell phone running the Apple ][ version of Lemonade Stand.

Yes. My cell phone. Running an Apple ][ app.

How?

AppleIIGo.

Pretty easy to use… download, extract, put disk images in the Disks directory, and (on Windows or Mac) run the relevant script, or enter the following command on Linux (taken RIGHT from the Windows CMD file, just with proper slashes instead of backslashes, and cp instead of copy ;)):

java -jar Tools/AppleIIGoPacker.jar
cp AppleIIGo/bin/AppleIIGo.jad AppleIIGo/AppleIIGo.jad

That cp operation isn’t necessary if you use Sprint – and if you do use Sprint, upload it to your phone using Rumkin’s Phone Uploader. (Upload the AppleIIGo.jar (not the jad) file from the AppleIIGo directory.)

Enjoy!


Liekomg, no more rice! Oh, and leenooks.

I got rid of my Civic today… I think the pictures will say it all. 😀 (They had a bit of a problem getting it on the trailer without ramps… so they took a running start. 😆

And then they strapped it on their trailer and left! 😀 I’m all of… um… $215 richer. Yay. At least I don’t have that pile rotting up the driveway any more… :p

Now, when they saw my Golf, they tried to get me to sell it, but… I just got that thing running. Glow plugs help a LOT with starting a diesel in this damn cold weather. 😉

So, anyway, the other thing. I’ve decided to start running Linux on this ThinkPad. So, I decided to go with the flavor of the month, to try to make my life as easy as possible. That means Ubuntu.

I burned the CDs of my recovery partition, and saved ISOs of them onto my server. That way, I could restore the system in the future despite proceeding to nuke that partition. After that, I realized that I needed a hell of a lot more HDD space than that… so I started deleting crap, and got myself TONS of room. After some SNAFUs with defragging, then shrinking the partition, Ubuntu installed just fine.

Now, here’s something that is awesome. In my previous attempts to use Linux, I found that I had to install a whole bunch of BS to get the tiniest thing to work.

On Ubuntu… it just… works. Sure, I’ve had to install the occasional package now and then, but Ubuntu’s howtos actually… make sense! And are… helpful! And I’ve not noticed the dependency hell that I found on the RPM-based distros I’ve used. Then again, I am trying to stay within the distro’s packages when possible…

Anyway, I’ve only booted into Windows a couple times. Funny part is, Windows has slowed down a LOT since this… 😆