I don't know what your native language is, but imagine how this exact same thing feels for someone whose first language is not English .. All the same scariness plus we may not even know what the words mean! And looking them up in a dictionary leads to a whole other kind of rabbit hole, and even if you understand the definitions and use in normal human language, it does very nearly jack shit to help understand wtf it means in the programming context.

I know this, I've tried to learn programming since I was, what, 8? In a vacuum too, since I lived in the middle of fucking nowhere in Norway for the first 17 years of my life. Imagine only having the MS-DOS or PC-DOS handbooks and some GWBASIC code written by Bill Gates to start out with. And the vocabulary of a 8 year old kid whose grasp of the English language is limited to what he learned during 6 months of school in Australia when he was 5...

I'm almost creeping up on 48 now and still can't code for shit.

Another issue is that the only way to stop dtrace is to kill -9 it, which takes the watched process with it in the fall..

Halp? :)

#Babylon5

I'll take Wayland when it comes my way without me having to lift a finger, but until then I'm glad the X Window System is still around. Keeps this old hardware useful.

Turns out Netscape 2.02 is too easy, so in this picture is IBM WebExplorer v1.1h running on OS/2 Warp Connect. Using the magic "work area" feature of folders (mark a folder as a work area to have the OS manage objects within it as a kind of unit), I can open several windows at once. True multi-process browsing 😉

#retrocomputing #browsers #floppy #museum #html #BrowserWars

Alt...

OS/2 Warp Connect with four browser windows, a text mode editor editing config.sys, the parent "work area" folder and the launch pad.

This is a game I think #Larry would like (A short thread).
#SpaceQuest #LatexBabes

Alt...

Picture of screen showing an ex-girlfriend of Larry's wearing a swimsuit and pointing a gun at him.

I've said somewhere I want to run NetBSD on a #286. Now obviously that's not actually possible, but I should be able to do the next best thing - run it on a 286 upgraded to a 486SLC!

But wait, most 286es only support 4MB RAM, although the ol' chum of a chip supports a whopping 16MB. So I have to find a motherboard that can do this.

Thing is, I already have one. See picture. But it's currently occupied doing very important Enterprisy stuff - it runs IBM OS/2 1.3 Extended Edition..but at least I know what I need!

Alt...

otherboard with a soldered 20MHz 286 CPU and a Citygate chipset.

All of those things are absolutely wonderful and make many of todays software developers look ... spoiled? What I want, however - and what I love doing - is making this old hardware do stuff its makers never dreamt of, things that are as far removed from their time as possible. That's why I will, if #NetBSD permits, run bleeding edge BSD on a 286-on-486steroids, and why I run web+ftp+irc servers (yes, multitaskign) on one 286 and multiple BBS nodes on a 386 - like one used to do, of course.

I cannot state often enough how amazing it is that there's still software developed today that will work under such constraints.

#RunBSD #EndOfRant

Until #snac starts doing work of course. Then I just sit back and wait.
#RunBSD #Patience

For the 486 running larry.weirdr.net:
- https://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=8169
- https://bsd-hardware.info/?probe=2ec3f61bc7

Enjoy. :)

CC: @jaypatelani@bsd.network

CC: @dch@bsd.network

CC: @grunfink@comam.es @stefano@bsd.cafe

Yesterday I found a 486 board in my collection that boots and happily deals with 256MB of EDO RAM! The speed is hare-raising :D

CC: @grunfink@comam.es

The latest mTCP for DOS is available!

This version includes some changes to improve TCP reliability on long running (but idle) connections, black & white Sixel graphics in Telnet, a Telnet emulation bug fix, and other small fixes sprinkled around.

The source code to NetDrive (network attached storage) is also published now - enjoy reading an unholy mix of x86 assembly code talking to Golang over UDP!

Spread the word! Friends don't let friends run old code ...

#retrocomputing #dos #mtcp

https://github.com/ltning/sshbench

#unix #ssh #benchmark #shellscript #bourne #runbsd

#unix #NetBSD

Alt...

Picture of NetBSD X11 desktop with htop(1) and hot-babe CPU monitor.

(Read the alt text for more info)
#retrocomputing #moreram

Alt...

Kernel messages from NetBSD 10.1 on an AMD 486. Panics due to low memory after showing interesting sound cards detected. No correlation I'm sure - only including to brag.

A bigger challenge will be the Nintendo WII - it has, I believe, 24MB or something like that? But at least the CPU should be vastly superior to any 486..

Do you do TLS in Apache too? On a K6-II?

Cc @grunfink@comam.es @gumnos@bsd.cafe @rubenerd@bsd.network

CC: @gumnos@bsd.cafe @rubenerd@bsd.network @grunfink@comam.es

I'll post each picture as a reply to this post, as snac doesn't like multiple attachments..

Enjoy. And wish the poor box luck serving this.

#servertorture #retrocomputing

CC: @rubenerd@bsd.network