12 Jan
2005
12 Jan
'05
7:26 a.m.
I miss 'ihnp4' and will always wonder where
Indian Hills is.
ihnp4 was an impressive machine, indeed. much of the uucp traffic
in the midwest went through it.
Bell Labs Indian Hill is on the far west side of Chicago. 5ESS was
developed there. A friend that worked there was the first person I
knew who had Unix running at home (starting with mini-unix, then V6)
12 Jan
12 Jan
9:13 a.m.
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Al Kossow wrote:
Ah, the memories. I remember how elYte one used to be if you actually had
Unix running at home. People went apeshit over getting a copy of SCO for
cheap. I think that was probably a big part of the initial attraction to
Linux: a Unix box of your own.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
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I miss 'ihnp4' and will always wonder
where Indian Hills is.
ihnp4 was an impressive machine, indeed. much of the uucp traffic
in the midwest went through it.
Bell Labs Indian Hill is on the far west side of Chicago. 5ESS was
developed there. A friend that worked there was the first person I
knew who had Unix running at home (starting with mini-unix, then V6) 
9:43 a.m.
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
cheap. I think that was probably a big part of the
initial attraction to
Linux: a Unix box of your own.
Actually, we had MINIX a long time before that, and,
on the PC's
then, and some effort, that offered everything one needed. When
time passed, and 286PM came, MINIX supported it. Then the 386PM
came, and.. MINIX supported it, altho not in the best way. THAT
fueled the linux thing.
This happened to be at the same time where Usenet/UUCP were slowly
phased out, and direct-IP access was coming in, eventually in the
form of the www thing. People not only wanted "a unix", they also
wanted full connectivity with it, meaning IP.
But, yeah, having "unix at home" was a big thing at the time. I
had Sun's at a very early stage, and MINIX for playing. Then the
first MicroVAX II found its way into my room at the top floor of
the house (_with_ Ultrix tapes !) and er, the rest I am trying to
block out :)
--f
11:12 a.m.
cheap. I think that was probably a big part of the
initial attraction to
Linux: a Unix box of your own.
It didn't take much hardware to run a real unix in 1994, even:
http://wps.com/archives/wps.com.11Apr1994/wps-hardware.html
40MHz 386 and 16M RAM. And I ran a business on it. Multiple (2, 3)
users.
As far as I recall, the problems were not technical per se, but
downloading sources and compiling, and the "sysgen" process was
obscure. It actually wasn't that hard, 386/bsd you edited some
junk in a config file and compiled. Default kernel and all that.
No modules. I was a hardcore DOS weenie when I brought that
particular system up, had never gone to a university so had no
contacts there, but I did have two friends who had done this, one
with substantial knowledge, whom I got a lot of hints from
probably.
It was stuff like *this* and not linux that made the early internet
explode. No fault of linux, it simply wasn't around then.
(Ugh, and I had an UNLIMITED BSD/I site license, for which paid
like $100 (seriously), from the "factory", talk about deals of the
century. Around 1995? It got sold with the rest of the assets of
tlg.net. I gave the original BSD/I box away a few years back to a
collector friend. I was storing glue in it (it once was just an
old box :-))
13 Jan
13 Jan
3:12 a.m.
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Tom Jennings wrote:
<...>
cheap. I
think that was probably a big part of the initial attraction to
Linux: a Unix box of your own.
It didn't take much hardware to run a real unix in 1994, even:
http://wps.com/archives/wps.com.11Apr1994/wps-hardware.html It was stuff like *this* and not linux that made the
early internet
explode. No fault of linux, it simply wasn't around then.
Hi Tom.
Are you saying that Linux wasn't around in 1994?
(Ugh, and I had an UNLIMITED BSD/I site license, for
which paid
like $100 (seriously), from the "factory", talk about deals of the
century. Around 1995? It got sold with the rest of the assets of
tlg.net. I gave the original BSD/I box away a few years back to a
collector friend. I was storing glue in it (it once was just an
old box :-))
That's another part of the point: Linux was free. No site license
required. And it worked. Sure, even if most people could get an
unlimited BSD site license for the cheap price of $100, that was still a
barrier to wide mainstream adoption of Unix as a PC platform, considering
DOS was effectively free and it could do a lot of what you wanted.
Certainly not as much as a Unix system, let alone BSD/I, but the other
thing to keep in mind was that just KNOWING that a cheapish BSD license
was available was not widely known. Only those in certain college and
university CS circles might have known that. I certainly don't recall
knowing that you could get a BSD license in the little community college
where I took some CS courses. As far as I knew, SCO was the shit if you
wanted Unix on a PC (circa 1990-1991). This all changed when Linux came
out. It seemed like EVERYONE found out about it as it quite literally
took the hacker community by storm and spread quickly and widely.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
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3:39 a.m.
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
...
where I took some CS courses. As far as I knew, SCO
was the shit if you
wanted Unix on a PC (circa 1990-1991). This all changed when Linux came
out. It seemed like EVERYONE found out about it as it quite literally
took the hacker community by storm and spread quickly and widely.
Well, that may have been how it seemed, but before linux was widely
available there was 386bsd. and then freebsd and netbsd... (on the x86
anyway).
I think 386bsd was the first unencumbered "free" unix I saw. I ran it
on several of my laptops (did some serious BGP development sitting on
the floor of my wife's grandmother's house :-)
But to be honest, at the time, anyone with a high speed internet
connection was using Sun's or VAXen.
As I remember, around '92 the free *bsd-on-x86 releases got stable
enough to run on the internet. Maybe it's just that I was a *bsd bigot
at the time. I do remember some friends running linux also but it was
shakey. This was before Alan and Alexy got into the linux networking
code (i think anyway, who knows. more wine!).
The networking on linux wasn't really ready for prime time as I recall
whereas the networking in *bsd was pretty solid. And after Van and
Sally had their way with it the TCP worked really well. I can't remember
when slow start and clocking got put in, it must have been around 90-91.
I remember being all excited about that at the time.
-brad
5:04 a.m.
Brad Parker wrote:
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
>where I took some CS courses. As far as I knew, SCO was the shit if you
>wanted Unix on a PC (circa 1990-1991).
Anyone remember Coherent Unix? I worked at the company up until its demise, so
I'd be happy to answer any questions about Coherent or MWC in general.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter(a)oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
5:21 a.m.
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005, Jim Leonard wrote:
Brad Parker wrote:
I do. We used to have a copy at the company where I got my first "real"
job. We never used it though. I think I actually have a copy of Coherent
in my archives.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
>where I took some CS courses. As far as I knew, SCO was the shit if you
>wanted Unix on a PC (circa 1990-1991).
Anyone remember Coherent Unix? I worked at the company up until its
demise, so I'd be happy to answer any questions about Coherent or MWC in
general. 
7:34 a.m.
On Jan 13, 2005, at 2:04 PM, Jim Leonard wrote:
Anyone remember Coherent Unix? I worked at the
company up until its
demise, so I'd be happy to answer any questions about Coherent or MWC
in general.
I think I have a derivative here somewhere for the PC9801... called
"Let's C" from memory. In the same place as ASCII Minix...
14 Jan
14 Jan
8:56 a.m.
On Jan 13, 2005, at 1:34 PM, Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote:
On Jan 13, 2005, at 2:04 PM, Jim Leonard wrote:
"Let's C" was MWC's low-cost C development system for the PC. It
came
with a cool spiral-bound manual, and consisted of their C compiler,
debugger and libraries. When they first came out with it (I believe it
was $75, or something like that), they had a contest and I won a free
copy from them.
Mark Davidson
Anyone remember Coherent Unix? I worked at the
company up until its
demise, so I'd be happy to answer any questions about Coherent or MWC
in general.
I think I have a derivative here somewhere for the PC9801... called
"Let's C" from memory. In the same place as ASCII Minix...
1:33 p.m.
On Jan 14, 2005, at 5:56 PM, Mark Davidson wrote:
On Jan 13, 2005, at 1:34 PM, Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote:
I have the PC9801 derivative.
The original PC9801 was *very* similar to the IBM PC (I heard rumours
that IBM was forced by MITI to share), but the BIOS was subtly
different. On The PC9801, the video memory was 16 bits per character,
and there was no BIOS call to write to the VRAM... so you had to write
display routines yourself (as an self-respecting PC hacker did). The
funny thing is that it was possible to write an interrupt handler to
capture character display calls, so you could actually run many PC
programs on the PC9801.
On Jan 13, 2005, at 2:04 PM, Jim Leonard wrote:
"Let's C" was MWC's low-cost C development system for the PC.
Anyone remember Coherent Unix? I worked at the
company up until its
demise, so I'd be happy to answer any questions about Coherent or
MWC in general.
I think I have a derivative here somewhere for the PC9801... called
"Let's C" from memory. In the same place as ASCII Minix...
4:32 p.m.
New subject: MWC (was: Re: How the Mac was born... supposedly...)
Mark Davidson wrote:
"Let's C" was MWC's low-cost C development system for the PC. It came
with a cool spiral-bound manual, and consisted of their C compiler,
debugger and libraries. When they first came out with it (I believe it
was $75, or something like that), they had a contest and I won a free
copy from them.
Much of the compiler work, at least when I got there, was done by Charles
Fiterman, who was the kind of genius that could whip up a C compiler for a new
platform in about 2 weeks -- and a peephole optimizer in another week -- but if
you gave him a task that was way too easy for him, he would do it almost
without thinking and there would be dumb obscure bugs caused by things like
incorrect order of operations, misplaced semicolons, etc. I fondly remember
him as a bit eccentric and very smart (in fact, most of the people who worked
at MWC were incredibly smart, and I'm not just saying this because I worked
there, it's the honest truth). Charles later left Mark Williams Company to
form Geodesic (sp?) Systems to build and market a garbage collection library for C.
I still have boxes of disks for the MWC C compiler for Atari ST. :-) No Let's
C though, although I remember Let's C being advertised in Byte and Dr. Dobbs'
before I worked there.
The thing about MWC compilers is that they were *excellent* at optimizing for
size. Not speed, but size. This led to some obscure tricks in the output
bytecode that made you scratch your head in a disassembler, but it was worth it
on systems with such limited memory. While we eventually ported gcc to the 386
version of Coherent, I still held great respect for the MWC compiler (even
though it was K&R, not ANSI) because of the ludicrously small executables it
produced. My numbers may be off, but I seem to remember that a
statically-linked binary of GNU TAR as produced by gcc at that time was ~256K,
while the same program statically-liked from the MWC compiler was ~50K.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter(a)oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
13 Jan
13 Jan
7:21 a.m.
On Jan 13, 2005, at 12:39 PM, Brad Parker wrote:
I think 386bsd was the first unencumbered
"free" unix I saw. I ran it
on several of my laptops (did some serious BGP development sitting on
the floor of my wife's grandmother's house :-)
Yeah... then there was the really weird stuff with Bill. After the
first release, it all seemed to fall apart, and Linux kind of fell into
the hole it left behind.
4:02 a.m.
On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 09:12 -0800, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Tom Jennings wrote:
<...>
That's the year I was running the SLS distribution on a 486dx33 with 8
meg of memory - used to scream along it did. Well, apart from kernel
rebuilds; they took several hours (but things back then didn't feel like
they *needed* to be so fast, so it was no big deal).
I got a lot of uni assigments done on that system that I would have
otherwise had to use uni hardware for - to say it was just a boring old
PC it sure did the job nicely.
Hmm, actually it might have been as early as 1993 even when I first
installed Linux, not 1994...
I still had DOS on there for things like Wordperfect and 3D Studio (and
games like Wolfenstein). Which is interesting... when did LILO appear?
Was it around in those early days? I don't remember how I dual-booted
the system if not.
cheap. I
think that was probably a big part of the initial attraction to
Linux: a Unix box of your own.
It didn't take much hardware to run a real unix in 1994, even:
http://wps.com/archives/wps.com.11Apr1994/wps-hardware.html It was stuff like *this* and not linux that made
the early internet
explode. No fault of linux, it simply wasn't around then.
Hi Tom.
Are you saying that Linux wasn't around in 1994?
7:26 a.m.
On Jan 13, 2005, at 1:02 PM, Jules Richardson wrote:
Hmm, actually it might have been as early as 1993 even
when I first
installed Linux, not 1994...
I did the first port of linux to a foreign platform... starting with
0.2 I think, then 0.9{5,6,8?} to the NEC PC9801. I never really *used*
Linux seriously until around '96.
I really wanted to use 386bsd... but the whole "road less travelled"
thing, then silence...
7:38 a.m.
Are you saying that Linux wasn't around in 1994?
I know it *existed* then, and for a couple of years. I don't recall
it being a player though, like the little unixes were. Once they
were ported you got the whole thing.
That's another part of the point: Linux was free.
So were the unixes. It's the same as today; download for free, buy
a distro copy and buy support. BSD/I we paid for when we went pro,
and could bug them for fixes, etc.
This is bordering on religion, I don't care enough about the
religious aspects to argue it. My experience was, all of the
smallish end sites, and tiny, small and medium ISPs, developers,
etc all ran unix or KA9Q on DOS. San Francisco and Silicon Valley,
1992 - 1996. Never ran across a linux during that time, and I used
to work on a lot of systems, travelled to the Least Coast to talk
with other little ISPs, I don't remember a single linux system in
use.
Again, it's not a criticism, it's only timing.
7:58 a.m.
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005, Tom Jennings wrote:
I recall differently. By the start of 1994 I had a a Linux box running on
a spare 486 with a modem (two actually IIRC), a fully functional TCP/IP
stack and PPP so I could connect to my friend's burgeoning Linux ISP. And
I still have that box with a ton of pr0n on it that could have only come
Are you saying
that Linux wasn't around in 1994?
I know it *existed* then, and for a couple of years. I don't recall
it being a player though, like the little unixes were. Once they
were ported you got the whole thing. from the Usenet to prove this all ;)
This is bordering on religion, I don't care enough
about the
I think it may be more a case of differing recollections, but more than
that, different experiences, influences, and environments. It is clear
that there were a lot of options in the early 1990s, but which ones were
the most viable, and which ones contributed most to the explosive growth
of the internet?
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
8:51 a.m.
Tom Jennings wrote:
This is bordering on religion, I don't care enough
about the
religious aspects to argue it. My experience was, all of the
smallish end sites, and tiny, small and medium ISPs, developers,
etc all ran unix or KA9Q on DOS. San Francisco and Silicon Valley,
1992 - 1996. Never ran across a linux during that time, and I used
to work on a lot of systems, travelled to the Least Coast to talk
with other little ISPs, I don't remember a single linux system in
use.
Again, it's not a criticism, it's only timing.
I have to concur; my friend and I were thinking of creating our own ISP
business back in 1993, and our best prospect for a system was an old Harris box
running a proprietary Unix (which we were overjoyed to inherit!). I didn't
install Linux *at all* until 1994, with an early Slackware distro with kernel
1.1.12.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter(a)oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
11:16 p.m.
Tom Jennings wrote:
...
religious aspects to argue it. My experience was, all
of the
smallish end sites, and tiny, small and medium ISPs, developers,
etc all ran unix or KA9Q on DOS. San Francisco and Silicon Valley,
1992 - 1996. Never ran across a linux during that time, and I used
Remember 'the little garden'? That was my inspiration. Paul Vixie was
behind it I think. As I recall it was in La Honda, not far from where I
went to summer camp as a kid. If I've got it wrong please correct me.
As I recall (dimly) 'the little garden' was the first home grown ISP I
ran into. Something like a T1 and 10 modems in a closet; They ran their
own DNS, mail & dialin. I think they had actually end-to-end
connactivity for most users, however (i.e. it wasn't just shell
accounts, it was real routing to the home).
The was before I had set foot in MAE-east and the concept was mind
expanding.
(at the time I had a 56k and 2 ISDN lines into my condo and the phone
guys thought I was some kind of nut :-) this was '92-93 I think)
-brad
14 Jan
14 Jan
7:41 a.m.
New subject: The Little Garden / TLGnet Inc.
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005, Brad Parker wrote:
Remember 'the little garden'? That was my
inspiration. Paul Vixie was
behind it I think. As I recall it was in La Honda, not far from where I
went to summer camp as a kid. If I've got it wrong please correct me.
Well I have a lot of stuff from this era -- I had a life-killing
disk crash and backup tape death in 1992, so I have nothing before
Jan 93 ecept for the recent CP/M recovery.
But I have pretty much everything from TLG/the little garden. Here's
the oldest thing I cold find that was meta enough to be
interesting.
The context is, I ran the thing that was erroneously called a
"cooperative" though we were very co-operative in fact. I ran
the network, and started this (very fidonewsish) monthly
news mailing to all members of tlg. This is the earliest
mailing I have (I think).
(It was originally 'the little garden', no d/b/a or anything.
It later incorporated as TLGnet, Inc.)
notes;
ANything named "nos" are NOS boxen -- Phil Karn's ham radio KA9Q
code that just so happened to do TCP/IP routing. It was
quasi-stable. We ran it on single-floppy, 2MB 40MHz 386's.
cygnus used to be housed in a couple of residential apartments
at 814 University, Palo Alto, hence we put a POP there.
Looks like wps.com (was fido, now turing) was pingable (386/bsd)
Jan 93.
I suppose I should put all this crap on the website for googling.
--------------------------------------------------
(Phone numbers obscured -- tomj 14 Jan 2005)
Brief news about The Little Garden, February 1993.
I am *finally* connected to the internet, rather than just mailing through
a gateway to/fro FidoNet.
Some new members again this month. Unlike previous months, I have
personally and recently verified every system's DNS data (with NIC.DDN.MIL
down to the SOA). I will continue to check new members, and will followup
and repair or otherwise deal with 'down' systems.
Once such is tsoft.net. Their DNS data was corrupt, and then a dead modem
took them off the air. I put a loaner modem in place, awaiting final repair/
replacement, and I will make sure their DNS is working ASAP.
gnu-age.com is down with hardware troubles; due to a job change Joe might
not be coming online again.
If you notice trouble in the little garden, please notify me; I will
do what I can to solve problems, and increasingly, try to head them off
before they happen.
Two items follow this message: the current, updated contact list (corrected
phone numbers and additional backup email addresses for many), followed
by an ASCII map of the end leafs of the little garden; handy if you suspect
network troubles, and want numeric IP addresses to ping for testing, if
nothing else.
The Little Garden Network: Contacts List, February 93
Member Contact Email Phone
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TLG everybody the-little-garden(a)cygnus.com
Alternet Operations[*] ops(a)uunet.uu.net +1 703 xxx xxxx 24hrs
TIS John Sebes ejs(a)ba.tis.com +1 415 xxx xxxx mv site
Rich Feiertag feiertag(a)ba.tis.com +1 415 xxx xxxx mv site
Nancy Kelem kelem(a)ba.tis.com +1 415 xxx xxxx mv site
Steve Crocker crocker(a)tis.com +1 301 xxx xxxx MD site
Cygnus John Gilmore gnu(a)cygnus.com +1 415 xxx xxxx mv site
gnu(a)toad.com +1 415 xxx xxxx sf site
Stu Grossman grossman(a)cygnus.com +1 415 xxx xxxx mv site
Jean Marie Diaz ambar(a)cygnus.com +1 415 xxx xxxx mv site
Jim Wilson wilson(a)cygnus.com +1 415 xxx xxxx pa site
Pozar Tim Pozar pozar(a)kumr.lns.com +1 415 xxx xxxx site (h)
+1 415 xxx xxxx (w)
Hoover Kenton Hoover shibumi(a)joes.garage.com +1 415 xxx xxxx (h)
shibumi(a)turbo.bio.net +1 415 xxx xxxx (w)
CFCL Rich Morin rdm(a)cfcl.com +1 415 xxx xxxx site
xxx xxxx
Tharp Phil Tharp tharp(a)adobe.com +1 415 xxx xxxx (w)
ptharp(a)cif.com +1 415 xxx xxxx (h)
(CIF.COM DOESN'T EXIST: use cif.ba.tis.com for now)
Lever Edward Elhauge ee(a)lever.lever.com +1 415 xxx xxxx x314 site (w)
Richard Couture richard(a)myrddin.imat.com +1 415 xxx xxxx site (h)
Wired Mark Seiden mis(a)wired.com +1 415 xxx xxxx site
(wired(a)well.sf.ca.us) +1 415 xxx xxxx site
(jonathan(a)casa.stanford.edu)
Joe Arceneaux jla(a)gnu-age.com +1 415 xxx xxxx h
(GNU-AGE.COM IS DOWN)
Michael Park mikep(a)dragoman.com +1 415 xxx xxxx h
(mikep(a)abekas.com) +1 415 xxx xxxx w
tsoft Mike Durkin mdurkin(a)tsoft.net +1 805 xxx xxxx h
(mdurkin(a)polyslo.csc.calpoly.edu)
(TSOFT.NET IS DOWN)
Paul Goldstone paul(a)traveler.com +1 415 xxx xxxx h
;NEW MEMBERS
David Muir Sharnoff <reg. not complete> +1 510 xxx xxxx h
(muir(a)cogsci.berkeley.edu)
wsrcc Wolfgang Rupprecht wolfgang(a)wsrcc.com +1 510 xxx xxxx h
(wolfgang(a)mgm.mit.edu)
Tom Jennings tomj(a)wps.com +1 415 xxx xxxx h/w
Mark Seiden mis(a)seiden.com +1 415 xxx xxxxxx xxxx
(mis(a)usenix.org)
[*] Note: Only TIS should call Alternet.
[**] Note: An "URGENT" message will get fast response
Map of the little garden universe, member-centric. This is meant as a
guide, rather than the current Absolute Truth. Useful for pinging various
hosts'n'routers when you suspect trouble. Meet your neighbors!
Tom Jennings tomj(a)fido.wps.com
4 Feb 93
[NOTE: All addresses are in Class B subnet 140.174.xx.xx; eg.
.85.1 is shorthand for 140.174.85.1.]
to the big room
and beyond
^
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
| .
+-------+ . +-------+
|gw-mv- |.24.1 .23.253 |gw-liv.|
|pa.cyg |---------------|cygnus.|---+--------------- ethernet
|nus.com| . | .com | |
+-------+ . +-------+ |
.9.1 | . |
| . | .23.13
| . (814 Univ., +-------+
.9.2 | . Palo Alto) | nos1. |
+-------+ . |cygnus.| --> member IPs
|gw-pa- | . | .com |
| sf.cyg| . +-------+
|nus.com| .
+-------+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.5.2 |
|
|
|
. . . . . .|. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
| (Toad Hall, San Francisco)
|
.5.1 |
+-------+
| gw. |
| toad. |
| com |
+-------+
.2.23 |
|
+-------+---------------+---------------+--------- ethernet
| | |
| | |
.2.66 | .2.69 | .2.71 |
+-------+ +-------+ +-------+
| nos1. | | nos2. | | nos3. |
| toad. | | toad. | | toad. |
| com | | com | | com |
+-------+ +-------+ +-------+
| <----- Member SLIP connections -----> |
Router names appear in UPPER CASE.
Toad Hall, San Francisco
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Routers in series with San Francisco TLG members' IP addresses:
gw-mv-pa.cygnus.com
gw-pa-sf.cygnus.com
gw.toad.com
[Subnets .83.xx, .84.xx, and .86.xx through .89.xx routed to 2.23]
[CHECK THIS!]
Router (56K termination):
GW.TOAD.COM .2.23
On the local ethernet:
--- domain ------ gate -- dest -- subnet -- user -- name, etc
toad.com .2.1 gnu (John Gilmore)
nos1.toad.com .2.66 Router for TLG members, see below
nos2.toad.com .2.69 Router for TLG members, see below
nos3.toad.com .2.71 Router for TLG members, see below
mofo.toad.com .2.20 curt (Curt Mayer)
NOS1.TOAD.COM .2.66 (Router for the following members)
.8.xx (Subnet allocated to SLIP ports)
--- domain ------ gate -- dest -- subnet -- user -- name, etc
kumr.lns.com .8.1 .8.2 .7.xx pozar (Tim Pozar)
.8.1 .8.2 .66.xx pozar (Tim Pozar)
joes.garage.com .8.128 .8.130 .69.xx shibumi (Kenton Hoover)
cfcl.com .8.65 .8.66 .42.xx rdm (Rich Morin)
lever.com .8.193 .8.194 .20.xx ee (Ed Elhauge)
NOS2.TOAD.COM .2.69 (Router for the following members)
.73.xx (Subnet allocated to SLIP ports)
--- domain ------ gate -- dest -- subnet -- user -- name, etc
myrddin.imat.com .73.1 .73.2 .70.xx richard (Richard Couture)
gnu-age.com .73.129 .73.130 .71.xx jla (Joe Arceneaux)
wired.com .73.193 .73.194 .72.xx chance (Jonathan Steuer)
.73.65 .73.66 .82.xx (David Sharnoff)
NOS3.TOAD.COM .2.71 (Router for the following members)
.74.xx (Subnet allocated to SLIP ports)
--- domain ------ gate -- dest -- subnet -- user -- name, etc
wps.com .74.1 .74.2 .77.xx tomj (Tom Jennings)
(unassigned) .74.193 .74.194 .78.xx
(unassigned) .74.65 .74.66 .79.xx
(unassigned) .74.129 .74.130 .80.xx
University Ave, Palo Alto
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Routers in series with Palo Alto members' IP addresses:
gw-mv-pa.cygnus.com
gw-liv.cygnus.com
nos1.cygnus.com.cygnus.com
Router (56K termination):
GW-LIV.CYGNUS.COM .23.253
On the local ethernet:
--- domain ------ gate -- dest -- subnet -- user -- name, etc
ecotone.toad.com .23.9 hugh (Hugh Daniels)
sendai.cygnus.com .23.12 (Rich Pixley)
moria.cygnus.com .23.22 wilson (Jim Wilson)
kitsup.cygnus.com .23.40 (Sean Fagan)
NOS.CYGNUS.COM .23.13 Router for the following members:
.85.xx (Subnet allocated for NOS use)
(Note that the Portmaster doesn't use a dest. SLIP address; we keep them
allocated for consistency. Four bit submasks are used because there are
10 ports per box.)
--- domain ------ gate -- dest -- subnet -- user -- name, etc
dragoman.com .85.2 .85.1 .86.xx mikep (Mike Park)
wsrcc.com .85.66 .85.65 .88.xx wolfgang (Wolfgang Rupprecht)
tsoft.net .85.130 .85.129 .87.xx mdurkin (Mike Durkin)
traveler.com .85.194 .85.193 .89.xx paul (Paul Goldstone)
seiden.com? .85.226 .85.225 .90.xx mark (Mark Seiden)
(unassigned) .91.xx
(unassigned) .92.xx
Pozar's two-bit(tm) addressing
4-bit m m m m
2-bit m m
(.1) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 (.2) 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
(.129) 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 (.130) 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
(.65) 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 (.66) 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0
(.193) 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 (.194) 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0
7:48 a.m.
New subject: the little garden / TLGnet, Inc 2
Here's another major milestone for little garden... getting kicked
off Alternet! Rick Adam's biggest mistake -- if he hadn't done
this, we wold have remained a "share", but instead we ended up
with T1 to Sprint Gov't Systems Division (remember, thi sis all
before the CO/RE split) and a real colo at 444 Market (MFS) for
$250/month! We were the first customer for them. Man was this all
so flaky!
ANther one of those monthly mailings. No redacting this time.
---------------------------------------------
The Little Garden news, April, 1993.
This is about 100 lines long. If you are in a hurry, please refer to the
last section at least, search for ":::" three times, about line 75, regarding
our relationship with Alternet.
:::
TLG was pretty stable this month, size-wise. One person, M. Strata Rose,
is soon to be connected in Palo Alto. Phonelines, etc are the order of
the day.
There are a lot of Zyxel 1496E modems in the little garden; they are
fast and easy to use, but the pre-6.00 EPROM version has a rather
annoying bug, that dumps the connection most commonly during FTPs of
largish files, though it happens other times too. There are other,
less-important bugs. There is a 6.00 version that fixes that, plus
introduces a new bug something to do with result codes, which probably
matters a lot less. 6.01 will probably fix that too.
The Portmaster in Palo ALto remains reliable, with one crash during
someone testing their system, a possible Portmsater bug. It's being
persued. It's been quite stable otherwise.
Members connected via Toad Hall had a flurry of crashes in the NOS
routers, all within about a 24 hr. period. NOS seems to do this. There
is some vague pattern to it; sometimes I visit the site and find some
remote site hammering TONS of UDP packets to various TLG members, these
seem to be involved in the crashes, though the relationship is obscure.
After about 10 reboots in a 12 hr. period, both nos1 and nos2 stay up
for weeks or more. Wierd.
'nos3' in toad hall is really a 386BSD box, with one port in use; me.
It's been very, very reliable. The problem is, the TTY driver doesn't
understand "Carrier Detect", so when I lose carrier for any reason, I
have to dial into the net, telnet to nos3, KILL -9 <sliplogin PID>, then
I can reconnect. Sigh. Once we get the patched driver installed... but I
can't FTP the sources because my Zyxel drops carrier on long files...
But it's stable, and performance is excellent.
:::
WHICH BRINGS ME TO this: Pozar and I and others have been talking about
how nice it would be to have a box on the ethernet at Toad Hall (for
starters) that would run news, and nothing but news, and take a lot of
the load off of toad.com. TLG doesn't have a budget, and so there's no
hardware to use. It could have a numberof uses; it could be the news
server for everyone tied in at Toad Hall. You could also have an account
on it to read news on, rather than dragging mail to your box, for those
of us who only read bits of it around the edges, avoiding having to peek
into friends boxes that only carry a few groups, etc.
The idea is that it would be something like 386BSD, with 600MB of hard
disk, partitioned such that DISK FULL wouldn't halt things, etc. (This
box has an additional function as file server for the routers; see
below.) The problem is that we don't have any extra hardware, mainly
disks.
Volunteers, anyone? We need probably 600MB or more, no sense in driving
ourselves crazy with less. 386BSD seems a good choice, and the drivers
allow mixing types; we could install two 150MB ESDI drives with two IDE
drives to make the 600MB. We need: power supply, case, 386 motherboard,
4MB memory minimum disk drives, ethernet card. Mix'n'match is fine, ugly
cases fine, etc. Keep this in mind... I will assemble, install and
maintain the connectivity part.
Obviously this would work just fine in Palo Alto too.
(A future brainstorm: when/(if) we swap 386BSD into the existing NOS
boxes, the one-floppy, 2meg machines will have zero space for Unix
utilities, beyond the routing tables and VI. This news box could also
act as the server for additional, optional binaries etc for the routers;
the routers would remain reliable, stand-alone boxes.)
:::
AND FINALLY -- to be brief (just for contrast) the little garden is
looking for a new Internet carrier. Relations with Alternet are umm
strained, and a mutual decision was made to look elsewhere. We have info
requests pending with some and are in discussion with some other
internet carriers.
I was hoping to have at this time mor info on the range of offers and
opportunities, but like everything else in the world it goes slowly. I
had expected to hear back from people this week, but here it is
Thursday already.
So John GIlmore thinks it's a good time to have a meeting to discuss all
this, and I couldn't agree more. How about The Little Garden meeting at
it's namesake, the Little Garden Restaurant in Palo Alto? In two weeks?
Say 13 April, a Tuesday, 7pm or so?
Because of the importance of this, I'll post the meeting and reason
separately from this monthly boilerplate. The date and location are not
'hard', so suggestions are certainly welcome; though the Palo Alto
location is probably a reasonable compromise physically for all TLG
members.
15 Jan
15 Jan
3:08 a.m.
New subject: the little garden / TLGnet, Inc 2
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005, Tom Jennings wrote:
(A future brainstorm: when/(if) we swap 386BSD into
the existing NOS
boxes, the one-floppy, 2meg machines will have zero space for Unix
utilities, beyond the routing tables and VI. This news box could also
act as the server for additional, optional binaries etc for the routers;
the routers would remain reliable, stand-alone boxes.)
This struck me overall as how we used to be able to do so much with so
little. Now, a 2MB Unix machine would be some embedded router type
product the size of a modem.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
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18 Jan
18 Jan
8:51 p.m.
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 17:12:04 -0800 (PST), Tom Jennings <tomj(a)wps.com> wrote:
It didn't take much hardware to run a real unix in
1994, even:
http://wps.com/archives/wps.com.11Apr1994/wps-hardware.html
40MHz 386 and 16M RAM. And I ran a business on it. Multiple (2, 3)
users.
My first Linux install was on a home-built 40MHz 386 w/4M of RAM... I
have the check for the motherboard somewhere - $250 for the board and
CPU, April 1992, IIRC. I loaded Slackware from *stacks* of floppies
because the DOS-partion (UMS?) trick didn't exist yet. That long ago,
one could expect to get away with 4MB (there were tricks for 2MB, but
given the cost of RAM at the time ($20-$25/meg), one might as well
had 4MB before starting.
That same 386 also ran DOS on a different hard disk (not dual-boot...
I physically swapped the drives out). That was the box I beta-tested
"Return To Zork" on in its DOS phase. Got a lot of life out of it.
-ethan
8:12 p.m.
New subject: net connectivity 10+ years ago (Re: How the Mac was born... supposedly...)
On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 13:26:04 -0800 (PST), Al Kossow <aek(a)spies.com> wrote:
ihnp4 was an impressive machine, indeed. much of the
uucp traffic
in the midwest went through it.
For many years, I got all of my traffic via ihnp4, then via Columbus
Bell Labs (cbosgd (Columbus Bell-Labs Operating System Group?), later
cbatt), then either through Ohio State (osu-eddie, later giza) or via
a local UUCP club that was a mix of 7300s and 386s running Interactive
UNIX. I didn't have a UNIX machine in those days (couldn't afford
enough ancient disk to use on my PDP-11s), so I hooked in with my
Amiga 1000 - 2x ST-225 on a Western Digital WX-1 and a special
converter... that machine is detectable on the UUCP maps as "kumiss".
That radio club forked off a "mom and pop ISP" in 1993 or 1994,
infinet.com... they are still around, a couple of sales later, but the
original owners (friends of mine) got out years and years ago.
As an aside, I saw the remains of osu-eddie, an 11/780, first at the
university surplus, then later, as an empty cabinet, behind a local
DEC reseller... they had apparently bought it to sell off its parts.
I used osu-eddie in high school, so I know it was handling wads of
mail for folks in 1983 and prior.
-ethan
7278
days inactive
7285
days old
23 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
aek＠spies.com -
brad＠heeltoe.com -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
gtn＠rbii.com -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
medavidson＠mac.com -
tomj＠wps.com -
trixter＠oldskool.org -
vcf＠siconic.com -
waltje＠pdp11.nl