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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Got to say it’s really cool that it works with hardware 3D acceleration.
I may want to try to do something with it later on, however I’ll need to get it a case.
I have a cold, and yeah sound like crap. I’ll add specs later as I think my fever is kicking back in. Sigh. But yeah basically
P4 board / CPU / RAM $150 HKD
GTX-460 card $180 HKD
Sound Blaster Live! $20 HKD
37GB IDE disk $20 HKD
PS/2 Keyboard $20 HKD
PS/2 Mouse $10 HKD
700 Watt Power Supply $150 HKD
So yeah ~550 HKD or $70 USD. Not bad.
So a little closer look at the hardware. Â I’m lucky that there is an active used hardware market here in Hong Kong, elsewhere in the world you either have HAM radio events, ‘boot sales’, garage sales, or for the truly desperate, eBay, Yahoo auctions, and AliExpress. Â My go to place here is of course the Capital Computer Centre, where they at least will test stuff before selling it. Â I know I’m old fashioned but I like buying in person.
Intel P4 Mother Board
I had originally chosen this board to mess around with Darwin.  I wanted something new enough to have a P4, but old enough to still have an older ‘parallel’ EIDE controller port. And the Intel D945GNT, board certainly was up to that task.  Like ancient Darwin, AROS works best with either parallel disks, or SATA disks in older parallel emulation.  The markings on this board are a little hard to read as the bigger numbers are the product testing/radio compliance numbers, and the model number is a bunch of possible models as I guess they like to make so many variations on a single board.
close up of the D945GNT
Here is a close up, and E210882 is *NOT* the mode number. Â Nothing like confusion.
The Intel D945GNT motherboards built in NIC, the Intel PRO/100
One of the big reasons for using the Intel board, is that it has an onboard NIC, and Intel of course uses Intel NIC’s so it has the very compatible Intel PRO/100 VE Desktop Adapter.
While you can get these on PCI cards, and use other boards, I figured since I was going to buy a board anyways, and once things get this old the people selling them really don’t care who made the board, but rather that this is an old P4 board, they all sell for the same price.
Another plus about this board is that it is new enough not to have AGP, but rather the new and exciting PCI Express.  This board as the Express x16, which of course is perfect for a ‘large’ GPU.  AROS has a port of the Gallium3D nouveau driver, making this perfect for a super cheap GTX 460.
I shopped around for a while and I found this accelerator, that although has no apparent labeling at least on the flip side it has the identification. I really don’t know what is the fastest GPU you can get for AROS, but this one seems to work just fine, and it’s what Stephen Jones is using so that is what I went with.
Inno3D GTX-460
And looking under AROS, this is how the PCI resources show up for the video card.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
This was an old card, and it looked like either the OEM didn’t put any stickers on it, or someone had taken them off. Â Either way I don’t care, and it doesn’t matter as it works just fine. Â Sure the GTX 1080 is over five times faster, but the open Gallium driver won’t work with it as Nvidia has done their best to break open stuff, and even if it did, you can’t buy a 1080 for less than a pizza. Â At least not yet.
For some reason, I had begun collecting older and cheap Sound Blaster cards when I see them. Â I wasn’t going to spend more than $50 HKD ($7 USD) for them, so I don’t have an Audigy cards yet, but I did have this Live card. Â At the time I didn’t think it was anything special, although the EMU10k chip is desirable, and popular for much older systems.
Sound Blaster Live!
This card is the CT0100 model. And it works great!
CT0100
And this is how AROS sees the card
Sound Blaster Live! with EMU10k1 chip
The AROS HCLÂ is a little confusing to me, but it all seems to work. Â If it weren’t for the Stephen Jones video I wouldn’t have tried as it implies it won’t work.
It doesn’t hit on the breakpoints for some reason. I’m most likely doing something wrong.
GNU gdb 4.17
Copyright 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
Type “show copying” to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type “show warranty” for details.
This GDB was configured as “–host=i486-pc-netbsd –target=i386-linux-gnuaout”…
Setting up the environment for debugging gdb.
Breakpoint 1 at 0x94a4: file panic.c, line 18.
Breakpoint 2 at 0x667b: file init/main.c, line 110.
tcp_open ! localhost:1234
0xfff0 in sys_unlink () at memory.c:430
430 }
(top-gdb)c
Continuing.
Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
panic (s=0x1dd6c “”) at panic.c:23
23 for(;;);
(top-gdb)bt
#0 panic (s=0x1dd6c “”) at panic.c:23
#1 0xd9b3 in mount_root () at memory.c:430
#2 0x12f39 in sys_setup (BIOS=0x1ab38) at hd.c:157
#3 0x7477 in system_call () at sched.c:412
#4 0x1000000 in ?? ()
(top-gdb)
But after a LOT of struggling it certainly looks about right.
Linux 0.11 kernel panic on mounting root
I then went ahead and built GDB 8.0.1, and it’s incredibly slow, and I guess not too compatible with Qemu 0.9 (I had issues with newer builds though) but it does break.
(top-gdb)target remote localhost:1234
Remote debugging using localhost:1234
0x0000fff0 in sys_unlink () at memory.c:83
83 }
(top-gdb)i b
Num Type Disp Enb Address What
1 breakpoint keep y 0x000094a4 in panic at panic.c:18
2 breakpoint keep y 0x000094a4 in panic at panic.c:18
silent
return
(top-gdb)c
Continuing.
Breakpoint 1, panic (s=0xd8cf <sys_mount+227>) at panic.c:18
18 printk(“Kernel panic: %s\n\r”,s);
Reply contains invalid hex digit 79
(top-gdb)i s
Reply contains invalid hex digit 79
(top-gdb)bt
#0 0x0000d9b3 in mount_root () at memory.c:83
#1 0x0001ab60 in hd_info ()
#2 0x00000000 in ?? ()
(top-gdb)i r
eax 0x0 0
ecx 0x51 81
edx 0x1fb4c 129868
ebx 0x0 0
esp 0xffff94 0xffff94
ebp 0xffffa8 0xffffa8
esi 0x1ab60 109408
edi 0x0 0
eip 0xd9b3 0xd9b3 <mount_root+139>
eflags 0x246 [ PF ZF IF ]
cs 0x8 8
ss 0x10 16
ds 0x10 16
es 0x10 16
fs 0x17 23
gs 0x17 23
(top-gdb)
And while it more or less runs there is some issues using the GDB stub from Qemu 0.9.0, although I had a world of pain with newer versions. And I’ve never done the kernel debug thing before so this is all new to me.
And I guess it goes as no surprise that with GDB 8, they have a.out Linux tagged as obsolete and to be removed. I guess I need to try a GDB that was current to Qemu 0.90 so it may not have so many packet overruns and unexpected results…
Microsoft has had a long tradition of wanting to be cool and edgy, and copying what is popular to make themselves a metwo company. Â And it’s really random, some things become wildly popular, while others crash and burn so hard that almost all existence of it happening is destroyed. Â Back before the commercialization of the internet, if you wanted to do real-time conversations you used IRC, and before then it was just talk/ytalk on any UNIX host.
However once the internet opened up, companies were free to invent their own protocols, and let the users choose if they wanted something more rich than a simple text based protocol, it may seem obvious today, but users wanted to do things like share files, and more importantly be able to minimize the program and only get an alert if someone was actually messaging them. Â Out of the gates of commercialization the big hit was ICQ. Â And Microsoft being Microsoft, first created Comic Chat, a simplified IRC client back in 1996 as part of it’s push with Internet Explorer 3, which brought many internet programs to Windows, including a NNTP client, and a simple SMTP/POP email client. Â Then in 1999 the MSN group brought out their MSN messenger.
With the later massive misstep of buying Skype from Ebay, Microsoft shuttered the MSN messaging product, and has been trying very hard to shoehorn Skype as not only a communication tool for users, but also for businesses. Â Apparently they are going to try to copy slack now for us business users.
Back around 2002, when MSN was integrated in with things like ME and XP, I found some server implementation on one of our internal servers. Â I think it was written in either Perl or python, and I just recall it definitely ran on one of our Linux boxes with a MySQL back end. Â At the time we wanted a private server to keep internal communications internal, and MSN was convenient as everyone had it, and all they needed was a registry change to tell MSN to use the internal server. Â Oh how times have changed.
