Ever since my brother offered to ship me a couple of ancient PeeCees that his company was otherwise discarding (i.e, they were destined for the dumpster), I've been salvaging computer equipment that would likely end up in a landfill if I didn't take it. The sad part is, these are often quite capable systems or otherwise nice components when given the right care. Marketing pressure and bloated proprietary sofware from a large concern in the northwestern USA cause people to never seem to be satisfied, so countless computer systems are discarded each year (or on shorter cycles) simply because they're not shiny anymore. Every time I turned around, someone used the magic word ``dumpster'' in my presence, and I would jump and scoop up whatever it was they were discarding, knowing that it was probably perfectly good. But there is a limit to what I can rescue and I had to establish some criteria for what was worth my trouble (and space) to salvage.

I generally held to my long-established criteria that a piece of equipment had to offer me some capability I couldn't otherwise achieve, or it must be ``interesting''. I was a long-time Apple ][, CP/M, and Amiga user and would not have a PeeCee system for a gift or a sailboat anchor. Soon, I began working professionally with the Motorola PowerPC-based systems, so that reinforced my biases as to what was interesting.

Ironically, I have a hoarde of PeeCee class machines and accessories, mainly because I had to take them to get the cool (i.e., weird) stuff I really wanted, but I occasionally accepted one because the next-generation machines were becoming refuse, providing me with a true bottom-feeder's upgrade. More recently, companies have been discarding what used to be high-end systems--mostly SUN SPARCstations--that we used to fight over in school. Now, I pick them up for a pittance if they aren't already free for the taking.

So, along with collecting/salvaging machines and equipment came a need to actually do something with them to justify the space they took up. Since for the first time I had machines capable of doing so, I started experimenting with networking. I now have four main machines that stay up as long as power outages don't outlast my UPS. The ``Living-room Area Network'' was never really planned. It just coalesced out of the machines that came to hand and managed to survive the benign neglect it receives due to my still being a novice administrator who can't really take the time to do the job. There has more recently developed a plan to organize the mess and standardize on hardware that is easily maintainable (i.e. Sun) and thin out the rest (PeeCees). The plan is still in its infancy, but work continues as best it can. There have been several naming schemes on the ``Living-room Area Network'' over the years--from Norse mythology, anime (japanese animation), or more mundane names derived from a machine's model or class. Recently, a scheme has arisen to name all the SUN gear after various Pendorian AIs (from Elf Sternberg's ``Journal Entry'' series of anthropomorphic science fiction).

OS Advocacy...

Main systems:

ossian, aka sean

Named for the AI of Parma space station, the gateway to all of Pendor. This machine is my NAT/firewall box so I won't say anything more about it except that it contains the most expensive 2-serial/1-parallel I/O card I've ever bought--and it was well worth it!

pm8500

PowerMac 8500/120. 450MHz MPC750 [Sonnet Crescendo G3 (was 180MHz MPC604e)], 1GB RAM, 9GB+18GB SCSI disk, ATI Radeon 7000 PCI Mac Edition w/32MB, VGA/DVI/S-Video, generic USB2.0/Firewire combo PCI card. MacOS X v10.4.6 via XPostFacto 4.0 and Daystar/XLR8 MachSpeedControl; MacOS 9.2.2 via ``OS9helper'' v1.01. The demise of `ss20a' afforded the opportunity to deploy one of the PowerMacs as the primary workstation. I'd been planning to do this for some time. Having finally done so, I only wish I'd done it sooner! NetBSD pkgsrc is bootstrapped for building additional software.

halloran, aka hal

SPARCstation 5, 85MHz microSPARC II, 128MB, 2GB system disk, 16.95GB RAID-1, hme. Named for the AI which probably has the largest repository of knowledge on Pendor. This machine is the fileserver for the Living-room Area Network. It runs NetBSD/sparc-3.99.17. The RAID-1 is made from a pair of 18GB IBM DGHS half-height, wide, single-ended SCSI drives attached to a Performance Technologies SBS440 host adapter, and implemented with the CMU RAIDframe driver included with NetBSD. One drive lives in a Sun UniPack disk enclosure, the other is shoehorned into the space normally occupied by the SS5 floppy drive and CD-ROM (Aurora 1 chassis). The original scheme to implement RAID-5 w/rotated sparing across two boxes of 5 4GB differential SCSI disks was unbearably loud and I don't have a ``machine room'' in which to isolate it, so I had to scale back. It serves 4 approximately 4GB file systems via NFS, AFP (AppleTalk) and SMB (Samba). One oddity: The CPU is rated for 110MHz, but the machine runs at/reports 85MHz regardless of how the CPU speed jumpers are set...

david, aka dave

SPARCstation 5, 85MHz microSPARC II, 64MB, 2GB disk, NetBSD 3.99.17. Named for The AI in residence at Shardik Castle--has a handle on everything and keeps it running as smoothly as possible. This machine provides NTP (tier 3) and TimeLord (AppleTalk) time services, DNS, and DHCP services to the Living-room Area Network and hosts email and an automated download script. (It was also going to be the new print server, but parallel port printing in NetBSD/sparc seems still not to work.) Other possibilities include Usenet news and internal web server.

verthandi, mark II

266MHz `pentium-II', 128MB, 1GB+8GB ATA disk, 52x24x52 ATAPI CDRW, Matrox Millennium 2164 PCI video card, RealTek RTL8139B PCI ethernet interface. Yamaha YM715-based isapnp audio built into main logic board. Named for the Norn representing the present in Norse mythology--also a reference to ``Belldandy'' from ``Aa Megamisama''. Triple-booting NetBSD/i386-current (3.99.16), OS/2 Warp 4, and PC-DOS 7.00.

Work(s) in progress:

halloran (hal), mark II

SPARCstation 20MP, dual 150MHz ROSS HyperSPARC RT620C/RT626 CPU modules, 512MB memory, 4GB+2GB SCSI disk, 4X SCSI CD-ROM, 6*4GB SCSI disks in RAID-R on Fast-Wide SCSI SBUS host adapter. NetBSD/sparc-3.99.12 (-current). This machine used to be `ss20a', the primary workstation, until it suffered a stroke (failed memory module) and died. The plan is to build this machine up as the next file server as well as assume the duties now performed by `david'.

Visiting systems:

ed

Macintosh G4 Titanium PowerBook, 667MHz MPC7450, 1GB, 30GB disk. Named for uber-hacker ``Radical Edward'' from the anime OAV series ``Cowboy Bebop''. Primary portable computron source. MacOS X v10.4.6. Most valuable accessory: KeySpan USA49W 4-port USB-RS232 serial adapter and `minicom'--a serial port terminal program. NetBSD `pkgsrc' is available to build additional software.

The release of MacOS X is what finally removed my last reservation against the whole Macintosh line--they finally had a real OS. So I made up my mind to buy one. I call it my ``Christmas present from the PeeCee Industry'', because I never spent a dime on their sh*t. That savings paid for the PowerBook--well worth it, too!

tankpad

IBM ThinkPad 760XD. 166MHz `pentium MMX', 104MB, 8.0GB IDE disk, 20X IDE CD-ROM, Trident TVGA9660 video, 1024x768x64K on TFT LCD, CardBus PCMCIA slots, dual IRDA tranceivers, video capture/playback module. Scored this puppy at the First Saturday flea market in Dallas for $50, including a (35W) AC adapter. The disk had been wiped, CD-ROM booting is not supported, so I had to borrow a ThinkPad 760-series floppy drive from a friend to get any software installed on it. [In the interim, NetBSD was installed by surgically extracting the hard disk from its `pod' and running it on another machine (`odin', see below).] This had to be completely re-done as the ThinkPad is very dependent on (at least) DOS-based utilities to configure and enable things like the PCMCIA slots--even for use with NetBSD! Eventually, I bought a couple of ThinkPad floppy drives off of eBay and `tankpad' (I hope to come up with a cooler name eventually) now dual-boots NetBSD/i386-current (3.99.12) and PC-DOS 7.

Weird stuff:

mv167

Motorola MVME167 system. 25MHz MC68040, 8MB, 2GB SCSI disk, 2x CDROM, Archive Viper 150 tape drive, 6-slot VME backplane in 19-inch rack frame. I snagged this and an MVME147 at the First Saturday sale in Dallas a few years ago. I looked at the Linux/m68k project for an OS to run on these beasties, but it was all too confusing. I was supposed to pull something from here, something else from there and oh, here's the kernel you need. Good luck. Then I looked at NetBSD and there was no question that NetBSD was the way to go. A raw beginner could do it. I was, and I did. Success first time. At the time, only the '147 was supported by NetBSD (v1.3.3), but '167 support was planned. My '147 died unexpectedly a few months later and I helped find a couple of bugs in the '167 support beginnning in v1.4. It now runs NetBSD 1.6 very smartly. The only real plan for this machine is driver development for other VMEbus peripherals and porting the system to the MVME141.

mtx604

Motorola MTX604-010A. Dual 300MHz MPC604e, 128MB, 18+GB SCSI disk, 40X SCSI CD-ROM. I intended to turn this into my Killer Workstation, but have been thwarted by the lack of proper X server to support the Cirrus Logic CL-GD5434 chip in 16-bit color mode. I've been using the ``Xbh'' server and it works OK for 8-bit color. I've considered compiling XFree86 myself, but just haven't had time. It was last updated to Debian 2.2r5 Linux for PowerPC. If I can get back to it and make it all work, it will definitely wipe the walls with any other box... Actually, I'm interested in getting NetBSD/prep running on it now...

wysepc, aka wyse386

Wyse PC '386. '386DX-16 w/'387, 2MB RAM, 89MB IDE disk. Legacy DOS machine kept because its not-exactly-passive ISA backplane arrangement is weird and therefore interesting. It is able to participate in the ``Living-room Area Network'' via an EXOS 205T ethernet card, the Crynwr Packet Drivers, and NCSA Telnet package. It holds a database of ancient hard disk drive specifications and jumper settings, some old DOS games and assorted nostalgia. I also expect to use it to run PALASM and my Needham's EMP20 device programmer. It runs IBM PC-DOS 7.00 and 4DOS.

urd

MODICON/Diversified Technologies, Inc. (DTI) CAT1000 '486DX2-66 w/16MB, 8-slot passive ISA backplane, 200+400MB IDE disk, 4X ATAPI CDROM, 10baseT ethernet, 1MB WD90C30 ISA VGA. Named for the Norn representing the past in Norse mythology--and the character from ``Aa Megamisama''. A couple of other machines once carried the name `urd', but they were repurposed and renamed. While archiving email dating back to 1998, I found that a machine built from this passive-ISA-backplane CPU board had been the original `urd', and so it is again.

Transient or offline:

bondi

iMac, original "Bondi Blue" model. 233MHz MPC750 (aka "G3"), 256MB, 20GB ATA disk, ATI Rage Pro C video w/6MB SGRAM. I claim this to be a "Rev A.5" iMac because it has the Rage Pro video like a Rev B, but cannot use the power switch for reset--just like a true Rev A. (Maybe it's a refurb unit with a Rev B MLB in a Rev A chassis? There was a sticker for "Redemptech" on it...). A friend of mine gave it to me since he's purging his household of Macs (a shame, really). As received it had 64MB and a 4GB disk, no mouse, no keyboard. I had a USB mouse I originally used with `ed' (see above) and an Apple Pro USB Keyboard I thought I might use with `ed' lying around. I had 20GB 7200RPM IBM Deskstar drive that I bought new about 5 years ago and never used. I have MacOS X 10.3.9 on it, of course and a very minimal MacOS 9.2.2. With 'ed' upgraded to 1GB, I shifted the 256MB SO-DIMMs to `bondi', but it only sees them as 128MB each. This was unfortunate, but not unexpected. But, I'll be all set if I ever get a Sonnet HARMONi CPU upgrade--600MHz MPC750FX and adds a FireWire port!

u5a, u5b, u5c, u5d

Sun Ultra 5 workstations. 333MHz Ultra IIi CPU, 128MB DRAM, 8GB IDE disk, IDE CDROM, floppy, ATI Mach64 PCI framebuffer. Solaris 9. Scored these puppies at the First Saturday sale in Dallas, TX for $275 for all four. Three of them had SunPC (Pentium PeeCee-on-a-PCI-card) cards in them. They were removed to gain acceess to the clock/NVRAM chip so the OpenBoot password could be defeated. Memory for these machines is mind-bogglingly expensive, so they have no mission yet.

u2

Sun Ultra 2 workstation. 300MHz UltraSPARC CPU, 2GB DRAM, 4GB SCSI disk. Creator-3D UPA graphics card, Sun TGX+ 4MB SBUS video card. No CD-ROM or floppy, making it a very big paperweight. Originally intended to be the next-generation workstation, lack of proprietary CD-ROM cable prevents booting the machine.

ss2

SPARCstation 2. SUN 4/75 CPU, 60MB DRAM, 202MB+202MB SCSI disk, floppy drive, Sun cgthree sbus framebuffer, Performance Technologies SBS430 SCSI card, unknown SBUS RAM(?) card w/extra plug-in to main logic board. SunOS 4.1.3. NetBSD 1.6Q was installed on an external disk, but this will be abandoned in favor of more recent revisions of NetBSD-current/sparc which have a crucial MMU bug fix for sun4c architecture machines like this one. The existing SunOS installation has been cloned over to a single larger disk, but no custom kernel can be built because `make' is missing...

pizzamac

Macintosh Centris 660AV. 25MHz 68040, 36MB, 329MB+1.0GB SCSI disk, 640x480x16-bit video and ethernet (AAUI). MacOS 7.5.5 and NetBSD/mac68k 1.6. This machine sat in my shelves for about 2 years before I finally got it out to see if it'd even power up. That it did, and it is a pretty spiffy machine. In addition to its local NetBSD install on the 1GB external disk, it can also netboot a kernel from an AppleShare (on `halloran' running netatalk) and then mount a NFS root filesystem. Something happened to its audio output so it no longer makes any sound. This would make it just a ``Centris 660v'', eh?

jean

SPARCstation 5, 110MHz microSPARC II, 256MB, 4GB+2GB disk, TGX (cgsix) SBUS framebuffer, SUN Swift (Ultra-Wide SCSI + hme). Named for the AI installed at Cutters, the major medical facility on Pendor. Due to having audio hardware built-in, this is a more `fun' workstation than `nix' (below). It runs NetBSD/sparc-3.99.17. Mostly does builds of NetBSD for the other sun4m-class machines. mpg123 installed so it can be a network jukebox in my bedroom. It also has a full Solaris 9 installation for testing/formatting SCSI disks.

nix

SPARCstation 4. 110MHz microSPARC II, 160MB, 4GB disk, TCX 8-bit framebuffer built in. Named for the AI accompanying Morrail Shigokai's archeological expedition--currently researching the ruins of Ritacha. I'm looking for the SS4 audio module to go in the machine so it'll be a fun workstation. I'll probably try to get the 1MB VSIMM for the framebuffer--nature abhors an unpopulated option slot. :-)

ss20b

SPARCstation 20MP. Dual 60MHz SM61 SPARCmodules w/1MB cache each. 224MB, one 4MB VSIMM (cgfourteen) SX framebuffer, one 2MB TGX (cgsix) SBUS framebuffer, 2GB+4GB SCSI disk, 4X CD-ROM. This machine and `ss20a' originally came with a single RT620C/RT626@150MHz, but through horsetrading I was able to get a pair of SM61s so one machine got both ROSS CPUs and this one got dual SM61s. It currently runs Solaris 9, but now that NetBSD/sparc has (mostly) working SMP support, it may become an experimental platform for that.

skuld

Tyan Tomcat III. Dual 200MHz `pentium MMX', 128MB RAM, 9GB IDE disk, TeKrAm DC395U SCSI adapter. Named for the Norn representing the future in Norse mythology--also the character in ``Aa Megamisama''. This was my primary workstation for a long time, before I started getting fed-up with Linux's screwyness and instability. It ran RedHat 6.2 w/custom-configured SMP kernel. Now running NetBSD1.6P/i386.

spike

DEC Celebris 5133XL. Dual 133MHz `pentium' on CPU daughterboard, 80MB, 512MB SCSI disk, 4GB IDE disk. Named for the principal protagonist in ``Cowboy Bebop''. It came with only one CPU, but I just happened to have an extra 133MHz part lying around. An Alpha CPU card was available to replace the dual `pentium'. The IDE interface can be disabled to permit booting from SCSI, but the interface is still fully available to the OS, once booted. Currently running FreeBSD 4.2 with custom SMP kernel. A likely candidate for NetBSD/i386-current.

julia

`pentium pro', specification unknown. 0MB, 0GB disk. Still coalescing parts. Named for the mystery woman of `spike's past in ``Cowboy Bebop''. NetBSD/i386-current, of course.

pm7500

PowerMac 7500/100. 180MHz MPC604e (was 100MHz MPC601), 1GB, 4GB+18GB SCSI disk, generic USB2.0/FireWire400 PCI Combo card. MacOS X v10.2.8 via XPostFacto 4.0, MacOS 9.2.2 via "OS9helper" v1.01. Looking to get MPC74xx ('G4') CPU card at some point and run 10.4.6.

amiga3k

Amiga 3000. 25MHz MC68030/'882, 16MB FastRAM, 2MB ChipRAM. 600MB for AmigaDOS 3.1, 2GB for NetBSD/amiga v1.6. Has A2065 ethernet card and uses AmiTCP v4.3 when running AmigaDOS. I'm told this was originally an Amiga 3000UX system, with SVR4/68k available, since it came with the A3070 tape drive. But any trace of the UNIX boot/distribution tape was lost before I got it.

amiga4k

Amiga 4000. 25MHz MC68040, 16MB FastRAM, 2MB ChipRAM. 6GB IDE disk (approx. 4GB for AmigaDOS 3.5, >2GB NetBSD/amiga-1.6). I need to get SCSI and ethernet interfaces for this machine. I want to integrate Amigas back into my computing landscape, and that generally means I need a network at least. When I can get time, the A2091 card has been liberated from the A2000 and is available for installation in the A4000.

bandicoot

Sony PlayStation 2. 200MHz MIPS R5900 (Toshiba) CPU, 32MB, 38GB IDE disk. Dual-boot either PS2 Linux or NetBSD/playstation2-1.5ZC. Named for Sony Computer Entertainment's spokescritter. Right now, it's just another notch in my ``NetBSD everywhere'' scheme rather than anything functional (i.e., `because I can').

ssrv1k

Sun SPARCserver 1000. 3 CPU cards w/2 50MHz SM51 SuperSPARC CPU modules w/1MB cache each--6 processors total, 672MB, 2 535MB SCSI disks internal, ??? disks external. For a while, This machine was running Solaris 8 with 2 external 4GB disks, but those have been repurposed. Some resource shuffling should bring it back with sufficient disk space. Solaris 8 is the end of the line for this `sun4d' architecture machine. NetBSD support for `sun4d' is in its infancy. I'm not really sure what I'd do with this machine if I had it running. But at least it escaped the dumpster.

oroboros

Named for the serpent that bites its own tail from Norse mythology. This name is used for any machine which will not be connecting to the Living-room Area Network.

Special/legacy:

3 Amiga 500s

One of these is my first Amiga, purchased used in 1992. Technically, I still owe my youngest brother for a half-interest in the machine since we split the cost of it...

1 Amiga 2000

Found this in a electronics surplus store I frequent (EPO on Fondren in Houston, TX). They'd just put it up that day and I snagged it. It was very, very, very stock. I applied the common hacks and installed an OS3.1 ROM. I put a GuruROM in the A2091 SCSI/RAM card I'd found for $2.00 at First Saturday years ago, and it's a respectable system now. In order to use the A2091 in my A4000, the A2000 now sports a SupraDrive card and the matching SupraRAM card (w/6MB). I'd like to get an accelerator and another A2065 ethernet card to flesh it out... Also available: A2232 8-port serial I/O board.

1 Amiga 1200HD

This was given to me along with another of the A500s above, in a box of Amiga stuff a former coworker got from an acquaintence of his. He wasn't interested in Amiga stuff, but remembered that I was and gave it to me. I have an OS3.1 kit for it, but haven't installed it, pending installation of a larger hard disk (4.2GB rather than 120MB). I've also been looking at drivers to allow use of PCMCIA ethernet cards with it. I'd like to get an accelerator with at least a full MC68030 CPU so I can have the option to run NetBSD on it, too... Unfortunately, the Amiga One did not retain the planned compatibility connector that would have let one dock an A1200 motherboard to the Amiga One board...

4 Commodore CDTVs

These are what 'set-top boxes' (ugh, I hate that term) should be. These are essentially Amiga 500s with special firmware and a CD-ROM drive instead of a floppy disk. The principle reason I have any of these is for them to serve as CD-ROM drives using PARnet between the parallel ports of the CDTV and the other Amigas. One of them has been ``souped up'' with a SCSI-TV from AmiTriX, a MegaChip/2MB Agnus, and other goodies.

Numerous Apple //es a ][+ and a Franklin ACE 1000

Most, if not all, equipped with a PCPI Applicard, one with a CardZ180... Also, there's a IIgs motherboard floating around...

Davidge DSB4000 Z80 single-board computer

includes GIDE IDE interface for Z80 systems

MicroMint SB180

Ever since I read the article series in Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar column in Byte years ago, I dreamed of building a ``lunchbox computer'' with one of these, but they don't make metal lunchboxes anymore... :-(

NorthStar Horizon

Cray X/Y-MP diagnostic station. NorthStar HDOS and CP/M2.2

CCS/TEI S100 Z80 computer system

CPU/RAM/FDC cards by California Computer Systems in an enclosure/backplane by TEI. If I can ever set up a `DMZ' machine, one project would be to run an old-fashioned RCP/M on such a box, hung off a serial port of the server. Then, you could `telnet' into the nostalgia...

Morrow MD3

I was given the logic board by a friend who wanted to keep the case as a hard drive enclosure. I found a case by asking around on `comp.os.cpm'. A few years later, that friend's hard drive project never materialized and if I recall, I now have the original case and power supply (I'll have to check the stash's `annex'...).

3 Epson QX-10s

One of these still gets used for testing IDE hard disks with the Q10-IDE hard disk interface designed by Wayne Sung and built by me.

MVME141 system

This machine, or rather the pile of VMEbus cards and accessories of which it was comprised, used to be the Maintenance Work Station (MWS) for a Cray Y-MP supercomputer. I once got the original ESDI disks to boot up SVR3.2 UNIX. I had gone so far as to search the disk and hack /etc/passwd so I could log in as `root', but by then the disks had degraded to the point where they wouldn't boot anymore. I and some other folks hope to eventually get NetBSD up on this type of machine. We need hardware documentation! MVME141 CPU card, MVME224 VME/VSB RAM card, MVME374 ethernet card, MVME323 ESDI hard disk interface, MVME350 QIC-02 tape controller.

Future/unknown:

SEGA Dreamcast

Have BBA installed. Need to establish cross-development system.

SPARCstation 10, 40MHz SM41 SuperSPARC module w/1MB cache.

Candidate for next-generation NAT/firewall (ISDN built in).

2 SPARCstation 5s, 85MHz

public-access web, etc. server in my DMZ...

Teknor '286-12. Passive ISA backplane machine

This falls into the category of "Mutants and Freaks". I have a "MakeIt486" module that I want to try...

Decommissioned:

jet

166MHz `pentium', 64MB, generic NCR/SYMBIOS 53C810 fast SCSI-II interface w/2GB+4GB SCSI disk, 24X SCSI CD-ROM, Matrox Millenium 2064 PCI video card, RealTek RTL8139B PCI ethernet interface, SoundBlaster 16 Value ISA audio card. Named for `spike's sidekick in ``Cowboy Bebop''. Like its namesake, it has a disability--its IDE interfaces are dead. So it's gone all SCSI. Now triple-booting NetBSD 1.6ZE, OS/2 Warp 3 and PC-DOS 7. The idea is for my Dad to be able to use WordStar v4.00 for DOS in an OS/2 VDM and print to the network printer. When running NetBSD, the plan is for it to be the image-scanning (UMAX Astra 1200S) and CD burning machine (Plextor PX-W1210S). Parted out when ``verthandi'' mark II was deployed. Mainboard will be scrapped and the peripherals distributed to other machines yet to be built.

ein

Intel Advanced ML. 166MHz `pentium', 128MB, 4GB IDE disk, generic Symbios 53C810 SCSI host adapter. Named for the irresistably adorable Welsh Corgi who seems more on the ball than his human companions in ``Cowboy Bebop''. This machine was my first BSD-based workstation. Its purpose was to be a BSD machine that I would use for everything--as a training aid to learning the BSD way of things. It boots OpenBSD 2.9. I got all my favorite _Linux_ apps to run on it--better than on 'skuld', except that RealPlayer couldn't connect to streaming media. It was scavenged of data, stripped of peripherals and sent to a friend to become his new fileserver.

verthandi mark I

UMC 8810P. '486DX4-100, 64MB, 9.1GB IDE disk, 4X SCSI CD-ROM, headless. Named for the Norn representing the present in Norse mythology--also a reference to ``Belldandy'' from ``Aa Megamisama''. This was my first `big' machine. I salvaged it from a fellow in Florida for the cost of shipping--including the monitor. I originally ran OS/2 Warp 3 on it (along with PC-DOS 7.0) and eventually experimented with Linux. It ran RedHat 4.2, 5.2 and currently runs RedHat 6.2. It was the de facto file server for the network since it had the largest on-line storage of any machine. It also hosted for email and an automated download script as well as DNS and DHCP. Following data recovery, it was donated twice and returned unwanted each time. I eventually scavenged its peripherals and scrapped it.

faye

NEC Ready 7020. 90MHz `pentium', 64MB, 2GB IDE disk, 8X CD-ROM. SMC/WD8013 ISA ethernet. Named for ``Cowboy Bebop''s femme fatale. Older than she looks, but a nice package of features built in. On-board CL-GD5434 video is brilliant at 1152x864x16-bit color. 2 PCI and 4 ISA slots on transverse `riser' accessable through a hatch on the bottom of the case. Triple-booting NetBSD 1.6P, OS/2 Warp 3 and PC-DOS 7, it was originally intended to be the token OS/2 box on the network, but as part of the "no conventional workstation PeeCees under 133MHz" criterion, this machine was replaced by 'jet', above. It was donated twice and returned unwanted each time. I eventually scavenged its peripherals and scrapped it.

Bunch of '486 boards

The non-PCI boards (all but 3) were not worth my time to investigate, so they were stripped of any interesting parts and scrapped. Eventually, even the PCI-equipped boards were no-longer worth investigating.

odin

Austin Business Audio laptop. 90MHz `pentium', 16MB, 730MB disk. Built-in SoundBlaster audio hardware, 1MB C&T 65545 video, 640x480 LCD, up to 1024x768 on external CRT. This is the infamous `zero-dollar' laptop. Named for the Norse god because it travels widely and learns all manner of magick. When my brother relocated within his company, he was given this machine as a ``spare parts'' twin to the one he paid way too much for at the company surplus auction. He left it at my place during his move and said that if I could make it work, I could have it. I took it apart and ``fiddled with it'' and it came up. It ran RedHat 5.2 Linux OK, struggled with RH6.2 and now runs NetBSD 1.6P (1.6R kernel) better than any of them. Replaced by `tankpad' described above.

bifrost

'386-33, 8MB, 178MB ESDI disk, 300?MB IDE disk. Named for the rainbow bridge between Asgard (the Living-room Area Network) and Midgard (the big, bad Internet). My first NAT gateway. It was probably not much of a firewall, as I probably misconfigured any number of things. It ran RedHat 5.2 Linux during its entire tenure. It was decommissioned, stripped and scrapped (as were all '386 class machines in my collection) when the new firewall `ossian' was brought on line.