Category Archives: random updates

While on holiday, I had some access to a PowerPC mac

Posted on by
Reply

so I’ve made some builds, of stuff…

Starting with f2c:

http://vpsland.superglobalmegacorp.com/install/f2c/

This built pretty straight forward, and it’s not that crazy CPU intensive so I would imagine it’d run fine with the rosetta code on OS X i386…

I’ll have to make some more cpu/os builds as it’s a fun test….

The second thing I built was some SIMH binaries, but they would be SLOWER on i386 mac’s then the PowerPC stuff… Hopefully someday I can have intel Mac access….

Anyways I’ll have to upload those later, so I’ll just post back….

ML648s & video files…

Posted on by
Reply

So I got one of these ML648s video players for christmas. And it says it’ll play WMV/WMA files so it seems to be pretty straight forward to convert stuff right?

Wrong.

Right now I’m taking the output from handbrake and passing it through AMV convert then copy it to the device from windows explorer and you are good to go!

It’s a shame they didn’t write on the box, that it needs this AMV format thing….

But after a LOT of googling around here is the solution.

Polling around….

Posted on by
Reply

This weekend has been kind of crappy as we had some cisco switches flake out, but nobody knew anything happened… I’d been pulled away on so many things over the last few years that monitoring them kind of fell by the waaaayside.

Well in this economic environment nobody is going to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for some simple syslog/polling system that pages people. I needed one for free.

And years ago, I wrote a simple one that revolved around SQL Server 7/MSDE 1.0

Anyways I’ve made it as 2 CD images, and if you are bored, or in the need to poll devices with a basic TCP connect you can download it here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/simplemssqlnetw/

What may be useful for people is that I’ve put some impossible to find software on the prerequisite CD…

Namely:

NT 4.0 sp6a
MSDE 1.0
Option Pack (IIS4)
SQL 7 sp4

For some reason all the above stuff is getting dammed near impossible to find on Microsoft’s site. I guess it is end of the road for the NT 4.0 heyday. So at the least, this is my way to keep a location to download this software, as I’m sure someone will need it someday.

MSDE 1.0 for those who don’t know was a redistributable version of SQL Server 7.0 that had a 10 user limit, and a 2GB database size limit. Also there was no GUI management but it was great to use, because unlike SQL Express, it included the SQL Agent. The agent can run tasks at certain times, say like run a TSQL script that dumps a list of machines from a table into the hosts file, then tries to connect to each machine and record the state into a database…..

It was VERY useful stuff for the time.

There is no exciting screnshot, as I never did make an interface to the thing, instead I opted to configure everything through Access.

Other then that, I’ve been playing with a BackOffice 1.5 CD set I got on ebay… NT 3.51, MS Mail 3.5 & SQL 6.0!! It’s been so long, but MSSQL 6.0 was the first SQL server that I ever was payed to manage… It’s amazing how far we’ve come as an industry, and at the same point how things stay the same, although the installation of NT 3.51 is SO FAST!!!

Some updates..

Posted on by
Reply

I had a request for the qemu 0.90 binaries to run NeXTSTEP… I don’t own Vaxenrule.com anymore so for now I’ll put them here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1694005/qemu090%20for%20nextstep.zip

Sorry for the bitrot stuff… 😐 At least I’m still here.

Also while working on Tradewars C today, I came across this great package called OpenDoors. Even better is that it’s under the LGPL. The only “downside” is that OpenDoors requires Visual C++ 6.0 or higher to build, because of the toolbar.. Also I’m not sure if going from VC 1.0 to 9.0 didn’t flake some stuff out as well… I’m not 100% sure about it, but the trading part of the game feels.. weird.

The examples are pretty straight forward, and it took a few hours on & off for me to convert the standalone tradewars into a door program. I like the feel of it so much I may try to see about converting SIMH to run with it.. Maybe even dumbfrotz.

OpenDoors trade wars

OpenDoors trade wars

Above is a picture of what the console looks like.

9/11/2001 pages…

Posted on by
Reply

Ok, it’s not virtual stuff… but I’m sure you’ve heard that wikileaks has a few hundred thousand pages…

These two stuck out to me:

2001-09-11 08:47:46 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA
Someone just told me there was an explosion at

The first plane went in at 8:46 AM

2001-09-11 09:04:03 Skytel [002386438] B ALPHA
[email protected]||HUGE explosion just rocked the World Trade Center….the second tower is now on fire.

The second plane hit at 9:03 AM

And this one is just plain eerie:

2001-09-11 09:02:31 Skytel [004696708] B ALPHA
BREAKING NEWS: PER OPB, IT APPEARS AA 757 HIJACKED AND RUN INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER. THIS IS NOT A JOKE AND JUST BREAKING NEWS> RICK-Rick

Funny how us little people… knew so little.

And it’s funny how the NSA/CIA spies on us, but this offers a glimpse of the power they hold….

NES emulator written in JAVASCRIPT.

Posted on by
Reply

Well I guess we have officially crossed the bridge, where multiple Ghz machines can run scripts that can emulate a 1.8Mhz 6502 in realtime.

behold JNES.

And frankly the bigger thing to behold is just how FAST Google chrome is at java script. On my Intel Centrino laptop the google benchmark (http://v8.googlecode.com/svn/data/benchmarks/v5/run.html) scores 105 in Internet Explorer 8, while Google Chrome scores 3330.

That’s not a typo, Google Chrome is more then 31x faster than IE at executing Java Script.

I’ve got to find out where that whole NaCL thing went to, and where it is.

But seriously, go check it out! Mario in a browser without flash!

some flashterm updates

Posted on by
1

well I’m no great php coder.. lol but I’ve managed to slap together an extension for wikimedia that launches the terminal!

superglobalmegacorp.com

I’ve been mirroring a bunch of the pages I wrote over on gunkies, and included a bunch of quick connect profiles etc…

Right now I’ve got the following there…

Access research Unix v1
Access 4.2 BSD
Access 4.3 BSD
Access 4.3 BSD Uwisc
Access 4.3 BSD Quasijarus

Windows LIVE email settings

Posted on by
Reply

Ok, so this isn’t really virtualization, however I was setting up my step kids email, and it was a NIGHTMARE to figure out where the setup information was for the SMTP…

Like all things Microsoft it’s scattered in 320 places.

 

Configuration Settings:

  • Incoming Server = pop3.live.com
    -Port 995
    -Encryption/Authentication = SSL is required
    -Full Username = [email protected] (same as full email address, where xxxx.com = live.com, msn.com or hotmail.com )
    -Password is required
    -SPA(secure password authorization) = Off(uncheck this option)
  • Outgoing Server = smtp.live.com
    -Port 25 or 587 [Note: Preferred Outgoing is Port 587 instead of Port 25 since many ISP’s blocks Port 25 use. Similar blocking can occur when using Port 25 in hotels or accessing via a WiFi network]
    -Outgoing Server Authentication = On(check the option)-Encryption/Authentication = SSL or TLS
    * Choose SSL for Windows Live Mail, Outlook 2003, iPhone, iPod Touch, Outlook Express and Vista’s Windows Mail * Choose TLS for Outlook 2007 (required)
    -Full Username = [email protected] (same as full email address)
    – unless outgoing server is configured to use same incoming server option
    -Password is required
    – unless outgoing server is configured to use same incoming server option

This is the place to go for all the setup information it would seem.  Also I really like Vista’s email client it’s pretty dammed close to outlook 2003..  Naturally it doesn’t support Microsoft Exchange, but I have to wonder if Exchange server can be configured for IMAP over SSL.. You could then remove the need for outlook on peoples computers…

Also I found the pieces of 86-DOS, the precursor to MS-DOS, I’ll do a write up on that later… Naturally it requires the ever so awesome SIMH, and naturally you should start with the MS-DOS version right here, as it includes lots of startup emulators to get you going…

funny joke…

Posted on by
Reply

Well I bought some “SolarNet” netscout from SUN that allows Win16 clients to tunnel TCP/IP over an IPX network to a Solaris 2.4 x86/sparc box to access the internet… It is interesting in that it has NAT like functionality over a different network..

Sometimes we have to remember that LOTS of people in the mid 90’s only had IPX routers and an exclusive Netware environment so all this ‘internet’ talk had to be phased in, and a product like this would have allowed for a rapid deployment of people on the internet….

Anyways going thru the manual, it’s kind of funny. It’s FULL of Buckaroo Banzai jokes, talk about overthrusters, and whatnot. Then in the email client, there is this gem:

From: [email protected] (P.D.)
Subject: Careful with that Shop-Vac, Eugene!

Cleaners Vacuum Family’s Cat
—————————-
From the Ottawa Citizen, 14 May 1991

Sudbury, Ont. – Cleaners who used an industrial-strength vacuum to clean air ducts at a local home were surprised to learn that their vacuum had sucked up a cat named Pebbles.

 

“We got a call from one of my guys that the truck was meowing,” said Colin Firth, owner of Sudbury Air Duct Cleaning Systems. Firth said he thought the workers were joking until Pebbles’s owner Kristina Anderson called to say her cat had been missing since the ducts were cleaned.

Naturally SUN had credited John Whorfin for sending the whole thing..

Anyways I thought it was interesting to see what happens when tech writers run amuck.

Sadly John Bigboote didn’t seem to get any mention…. I guess management drew the line somewhere.

Oh those zany internet people!

I’ve been slacking

Posted on by
Reply

Ok, I’m still unpacking stuff in the new apt, so I don’t have anything that exciting.

I’m hoping that this blog will become more interesting as the guy fills out content… Ah yeah, remember the ‘good’ old days of 16 bit development? Ok they weren’t *THAT* good, but we all know the pain of legacy code.

I don’t know if it’s worth mentioning, but yet another version of Qemu has been released, 0.15..

And it would appear that proxmox has been updated to 1.3… I’m going to have to upgrade and give it a whirl… I just hope it doesn’t trash my raid.

And finally you can view Warren Toomey’s presentation about recovering an ancient version of UNIX…

Video of the presentation is here:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/Z/toomey.mov

Paper: http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix09/tech/full_papers/toomey/toomey.pdf
Slides: http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix09/tech/slides/toomey.pdf

Have a fun weekend!