What is a VLAN (part 2)

In the last post, we quickly went over the default install of GNS3.

We are now going to configure a QEMU template for Windows NT.  I’m going with Windows NT as its pretty resource low, has TCP/IP and other protocols like IPX/SPX which can be routed and NetBEUI which has to be bridged.

We are going to use the Qemu option

Although we do get this warning, it really doesn’t matter.  NT runs fine.

Give the machine a name

The default 256MB of RAM is more than enough.

Set the console to VNC, as NT is graphical

I set it to use the included qemu-2.4.0’s Qcow2 image format for the virtual hard disk

The default options are fine.

I’m not going to try to build anything that sophisticated, so 500MB is more than enough for NT 4.0 .  If you do want something more involved 2GB is the effective limit for a boot disk for NT 4.0 SP1

The default name is fine too.

We do however need to make some changes.  The network card needs to be the AMD PCnet version, and we need to add an additional flag to Qemu to restrict the CPU functionality to a 486 so that NT will install without any issues.

So the networking tab will let you change the type.  AMD PCNet is the one that is supported out of the box, and verified working!

On the Advanced settings tab, is where you can add the -cpu 486 flag, as indicated above.

On the CD/DVD tab, you will want to point it to an ISO of Windows NT.  It doesn’t matter if it’s Workstation, Server, Enterprise, Terminal Server.  They all install the same.

It will prompt you if you want to copy the ISO into the default images directory.  It really doesn’t matter one way or the other.

Qemu image configured for NT

Now the image is configured for NT.

Now we can continue to building our first topology (AKA Part 3).

 

What is a VLAN (part 1)

I got this question the other day, and I thought I’d make something of it.

“What is a VLAN?”

And more importantly…

Do you know of a good tutorial  / tool / game that I can use to understand vlans?

Sure do, GNS3.  So in this series as I know I’ll have to break it up as it’s going to be a LOT of images, I’m going to go over the installation of GNS3 on Windows (I’m not interested in obsolete package versions on whatever distro of the minute is the fancy in Linux world), I’ll go over how to use QEMU to install a Windows NT VM, go over how networking works with a simple hub, then install two switches, a trunk connection, and show how to observe the VLAN tagging in action.  Then add in other VM’s and more VLANs and then go over bridging vs routing.

The installation options are pretty simple.  I’m going to just stick with the default.

You can install it wherever you like.  You don’t have to install it on the C drive if you do not wish to.

And with that, hit next and it’s installed.

Im not interested in the solar winds stuff, so I just declined.  Nothing was missed.  After that go ahead and launch GNS 3, and you are welcomed with this screen.

I’m going to run everything on my computer.  I’m not going to get into slave machines, or even wondering why they don’t just launch multiple instances of dynamips where needed.  Or even what capabilities there are or even at the moment trying to force my MinGW Dynamips into the project.

It’ll pick a port and host binding.  It’ really doesn’t matter too much, maybe you want it for a proper LAN connection.  again I’m focused on using this as a self contained thing so the default option ought to work.

And with that said we can now move onto configuring a QEMU template for Windows NT (part 2).

OpenBSD 6.2 shipping

It’s that time of the year again!

As always information is available on the OpenBSD site.  The release notes go over all the changes, but the biggest change that caught my eye was this one:

  • The i386 and amd64 platforms have switched to using clang(1) as the base system compiler.

There has been long talk about moving away from GCC on OpenBSD, but many of the older platforms were ‘trapped’ on GCC as they only have support for the CPU in older releases.  And they have long since said it was difficult in submitting patches up stream and dealing with regressions.  Sadly for GCC this has been an industry thing with even Apple moving away from GCC based compilers to CLANG.

Maybe it’s just inevitable, things change.

At least the Clang competition is driving progress from GCC too, so at least current and new platforms benefit from the competition.  Also VMM is getting stronger, I should try it some day….

GCC 1.27 & MS-DOS

Inspired by Building and using a 29-year-old compiler on a modern system, i thought I too could get this ancient version of GCC working.  At the time I never had bothered with the older version as I had always assumed that there were many fixes and adaptations to GCC for it to run on MS-DOS via GO32/DJGPP.  However, after doing this, it’s obvious that GO32/DJGPP was rather built around GCC’s stock output, which would sure make a lot more sense.

And it turns out that the target machine being an i386 Sequent running BSD is the best match, both in turns of underscores, and debugging format.  At first, I had tried the AT&T SYSV i386 target, however it couldn’t link anything from the standard libraries that DJGPP has as they all have a leading underscore.  After starting to mess with internal macros to turn things on and off, and re-define how various portions of assembly are emitted, I found the Sequent target and went with that and everything was fine and using the existing build infrastructure for GCC 1.39 I now could actually run hello world!

gcc_v1 -v -E hello.c -o hello.i
gcc version 1.39
cpp_v1 -v -undef -D__GNUC__ -DGNUDOS -Dunix -Di386 -D__unix__ -D__i386__ hello.c -o hello.i
GNU CPP version 1.39
gcc_v1 -v -S hello.i -o hello.s
gcc version 1.39
cc1_v1 hello.i -quiet -version -o hello.s
GNU C version 1.27 (80386, BSD syntax) compiled by GNU C version 5.1.0.
gcc_v1 -v -c hello.s -o hello.o
gcc version 1.39
as -o hello.o hello.s
gcc_v1 -v -o hello hello.o
gcc version 1.39
ld -o hello C:/dos/xdjgpp.v1/lib/crt0.o hello.o -lc

go32 version 1.12.maint3 Copyright (C) 1994 DJ Delorie

hello from DJGPP v1/GCC 1.39!

Wasn’t that great?  Then going through my ‘test’ programs I went to try to build the infocom interpreter, and that is when things went off the rails.

funcs.o: Undefined symbol __udivsi3 referenced from text segment
options.o: Undefined symbol __divsi3 referenced from text segment
options.o: Undefined symbol __divsi3 referenced from text segment
print.o: Undefined symbol __divsi3 referenced from text segment
print.o: Undefined symbol __udivsi3 referenced from text segment
support.o: Undefined symbol __divsi3 referenced from text segment
gcc_v1: Program ld got fatal signal 1.

I’ve had some issues with GCC and these ‘built in’ functions before.  This was an early major stumbling block back in the x68000 GCC days, where after a lot of searching I was able to find 68000 versions of various math routines that were in the native Hudson Soft assembler to link in.  While GCC 1.x does have a libgnu/gnulib to include these functions it warns you over and over to not use GCC to build them, but rather the native CC.  But the problem is that I don’t have a native CC.

But I managed to save myself after googling around by finding srt0.c from 386BSD.  Namely these two:

.globl ___udivsi3
___udivsi3:
	movl 4(%esp),%eax
	xorl %edx,%edx
	divl 8(%esp)
	ret

.globl ___divsi3
___divsi3:
	movl 4(%esp),%eax
	xorl %edx,%edx
	cltd
	idivl 8(%esp)
	ret

I ended up having to removing a single underscore, but now I could link infocom, and even better it runs!

Wanting to try something far more exciting, I went ahead and tried to build DooM.  However, GCC 1.27 has an issue with m_fixed.c  I fired up GDB to at least take a look, although I’m not sure where the fault lies.

FixedMul
This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.
Please contact the application's support team for more information.

Breakpoint 1, 0x752c5ad5 in msvcrt!_exit () from C:\WINDOWS\System32\msvcrt.dll
(gdb) bt
#0 0x752c5ad5 in msvcrt!_exit () from C:\WINDOWS\System32\msvcrt.dll
#1 0x752bb379 in msvcrt!abort () from C:\WINDOWS\System32\msvcrt.dll
#2 0x0045805c in final (first=0xe066a0, file=0x75312688 <msvcrt!_iob+128>, write_symbols=NO_DEBUG, optimize=0)
at final.c:653
#3 0x00403198 in rest_of_compilation (decl=0x722718) at toplev.c:1296
#4 0x0040fbce in finish_function () at c-decl.c:3272
#5 0x004040c0 in yyparse () at c-parse.y:224
#6 0x0040239d in compile_file (name=0xe00def "C:/dos/xdjgpp.v1/tmp/cca02992.cpp") at toplev.c:837
#7 0x00403a33 in main (argc=11, argv=0xe00f90, envp=0xe01598) at toplev.c:1556

With the code being:

#ifdef REGISTER_CONSTRAINTS
	    if (! constrain_operands (insn_code_number))
	      abort ();
#endif

So I assume some error with constrain operands? Not that it makes it any better.  However, I know this one file compiles fine with 1.39, and since we are on the i386 another alternative is just to use the assembly version that was hiding in the readme..

DooM mostly built by GCC 1.27

And much to my amazement, it works!  Keeping in mind that this is using an a.out tool chain, along with the last DPMI enabled GO32 extender.

Considering the compiler dates back from September 5th, 1988 it’s really great to see it running.

I’ll have to upload source (GCC 1.27/DooM) & binaries later.  But I imagine it should also run on EMX/RSX for a Win32 version.

DooM for the VIC 20

I just found out about this one, it’s DooM! … on an 8bit.  No really!

I was watching this video of the 8bit guy, and (jump to 19:20) he quickly mentions DooM on the VIC 20.

Over on Denial, The Commodore Vic 20 Forum  Kweepa did the seemingly impossible by using cc65 and some assembly for a somewhat cut down (haha!) DooM on the 8bit.  The source is even available on github.

It has cut down the video rendering obviously, but still has some of the C enemy AI logic, it’s a bit more like Wolf in that there is no height in the cut down levels, but wow it’s still amazing to see.  The sound effects were re-cut from the PC speaker stuff, and yes, even reduced versions of the MIDI music make the cut!

Naturally this won’t run on a stock 20, rather you need to get the maximum 37kb of RAM, and it requires a floppy disk drive.

It’s really cool to check out, and yes it runs on VICE.

I’m more so surprised that this didn’t ignite more 6502, or other non 32bit machine versions of DooM.  You can find download information for the d64 image here, and a direct link here.

AOL Instant messaging to end service.

From tumblr!

And they killed it from Tumblr.

AIM tapped into new digital technologies and ignited a cultural shift, but the way in which we communicate with each other has profoundly changed. As a result we’ve made the decision that we will be discontinuing AIM effective December 15, 2017. We are more excited than ever to continue building the next generation of iconic brands and life-changing products for users around the world.

Kind of insane to pay way too much money for something, to just turn around and kill it.

All I know is that whatever they think they are going to do, it’ll never have the reach and recognition as AIM.  Maybe there is reverse engineered servers, like Escargot for MSN.

Messing around with Vistapro 4.0

So I uh.. found this copy of Vistapro 4.0  And I though it would be fun to kick out an animation.  At 320×100 this took a whole 8 minutes to render on my laptop.

I though that was cool, but I was mistaken in thinking it was multi-threaded while it rendered. I have access to a machine with 16 processor cores, so I setup a rendering machine, and found out very quickly it was only using one core.  I think their final product Vistapro renderer may have used multiple cores although the company that sold it went bankrupt quite some time ago.  Anyways I rendered this animation at 1080p and it took about two hours.

For a while this kind of ‘virtual reality’ and desktop rendering of places was quite popular.  Although Vistapro originated on the Amiga, but without a numerical coprocessor and fast processor this may have taken weeks or months on a stock 68000.  I haven’t tried, and I’m in no hurry to find out.

I didn’t insert any music or audio, so it’s just 48 seconds of the camera going around.

Building Synchronet on Debian Stretch

Yay

I still run an ancient BBS, using Synchronet on OS/2.  The problem being that I not only get port scanned an incredible amount of times, but so many things out there now logon as root/root and they think they are on a Linux machine and can then shell script their way into some exploits.  Ive tried rate limiting, and other methods, but I end up with so many distributed connections that SIO can’t cope and it’ll crash.  A reboot will fix it, of course, but rebooting 2-3 times a day is a bummer.  So I thought I’d front my BBS with a stub BBS, which means building Synchronet from source.  And while there is some guides on how to do this, I naturally hit some weird undocumented error.

So yeah, get ready for this fun error:

jsapi.cpp: In function ‘JSIdArray* JS_Enumerate(JSContext*, JSObject*)’:
jsapi.cpp:3988:16: error: cannot convert ‘bool’ to ‘JSIdArray*’ in return
return false;

So it turns out that GCC 6 and higher won’t compile the older javascript engine that Synchronet relies on.  Ok, so I figured I would just fix the cast and go on my way.  But no, as part of the build process once it figures out that I’ve tampered with a file it’ll re-unpack the engine and break on the same error again.  And this is why I find things that try to be so ‘easy’ and holding (I’m looking at you Cmake!!!!) end up being totally black box, and absolutely useless.

So what I really need is g++ 4.x, and what is the quickest and easiest way to get the old compiler?  Ugh, grab the package from the prior version Jessie.  Seriously.  Add this into your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free

and then run:

apt-get update && apt-get install g++-4.9

And take the new line out of /etc/apt/sources.list or you will have hell to pay.

After that it was a matter of modifying some of the logon code to streamline the logon process, and to gut the ‘ham radio’ door into something that’ll telnet to the OS/2 BBS.  After a bit of work it actually works.  I even tested Zmodem, and that works too!

Logging into the proxy

I need some ASCII art or something.  That and probably turn off new user registration.  Guest access is all anyone can get on the proxy.

Telnet menu

I could probably do more here.  Years ago I ran some public access Ancient UNIX stuff, but the problems were that it got slammed from the internet.  But if Synchronet can keep up with the idiots on the outside, I guess this works as a jump point into something else?  I may have to see about adding some 386BSD, and Linux 1.0

QEMUOS2 via modern Synchronet

And here we are, at the old BBS.  I never got that many people to begin with, and I did like having the only OS/2 BBS on the internet up.  The other BBS O-Zone seems to have given up, as their domain expired.  So it’s just me, once more again.

I’m sure the vast majority of people won’t care, but I guess I finally hit the tipping point where 1996’s SIO just can’t keep up in 2017’s world of relentless port knocking.

Great rename in progress

I’m sure this will end well…

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’) WHERE option_name = ‘home’ OR option_name = ‘siteurl’;
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’,’https://virtuallyfun.com/’);
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’);
UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = replace(meta_value,’https://virtuallyfun.com/’,’https://virtuallyfun.com/’);
UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’) WHERE option_name = ‘home’ OR option_name = ‘siteurl’;
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’,’https://virtuallyfun.com/’);
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’);
UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = replace(meta_value,’https://virtuallyfun.com/’,’https://virtuallyfun.com/’);

Since I had purchased virtuallyfun.com quite a while ago, and I had planned on doing this years ago, for some reason today felt like a good day.  I have had mappings in Apache to catch & rename links from a while back, but in reverse.  I have no plans on dumping superglobalmegacorp.com, but you have to admit it is quite long to type in, and the ‘non standard’ name for the blog no doubt wasn’t helping things.  I guess that makes 2017 the year of conformity.

As always, if you can read this, then it’s working.  Old links will continue to function so really nothing going on, same site, same crap, just flipped the aliases.

UX lessons from the Magic Screensaver aka After Dark

I found this kind of interesting, a breakdown from the original guy behind the once popular After Dark screen saver.

As it started as an experiment on Windows 2, it became a product on it’s own, and launched an entire industry, along with being copied by every major OS vendor.  In the 90’s having a screen saver was key, just as having simple games like solitaire, especially a broken shuffle one where the user wins most of the time led to Windows being heavily favored in the work space.

Magic Screen Saver for Windows 2

So for the heck of it, I figured I’d check it out, and as always thanks to Jason Scott, there is a copy of 1.02 on cd.textfiles.com And as reported it’s basically the ‘mystify your mind’ screen saver.

Magic in action

The runaway hit Magic Screensaver became After Dark, which then had several licensed addons like the Simpsons, Star Wars etc.  Back then themes for Windows were popular along with sound effects.  A lot of the functionality is still in Windows, although most people prefer that their machines are silent, only making audible alerts if there really is something wrong.  But back in the day a ‘multimedia desktop’ was a $5,000 noise maker, and not many offices were impressed.  Which of course gave rise to the ‘office sound card’

All Business and no fun!

Naturally under Windows there were virtual device drivers to emulate a sound blaster, as people still wanted to game with this cheaper ‘business audio’ card, although with the rise of Windows 95/Direct X gaming under Windows finally became a thing making Sound Blaster compatibility a thing of the past.

But going back to After Dark, they made a fatal error of teaming up with Berkeley Systems, who eventually started to make their own releases pushing the original team out of their own product.

After Dark 1.0 and the infamous flying toasters.

The toasters became focal in a few lawsuits, namely the Jefferson Airplane album, although it was dismissed as the artwork for the album had not been trademarked!  And they were able to force the Opus ‘n Bill screen saver where Opus shoots the toasters.  Late they changed the toasters to have propellers to avoid being too similar.

Opus shooting a flying toaster

Oddly stuff like screen savers too have largely fallen out of fashion with the rise of power saving monitors that just turn themselves off either from a lack of new images, or a signal from the OS.

One of those weird legacy things that in today’s world really doesn’t have that much meaning, but a scant 20 years ago was a major industry.