My Toys:


Main CPUs:

Nebula

Its called the Nebula because its full of small suns
This is 16 sun IPC motherboards in a box. They each have a 25 MHz sparc processor, 12 MB of ram, and 10MB ethernet. They boot disklessly off of teryx.

Edison

Edison is a Supermicro motherboard with two 3 GHz Xeon processors, 6GB of ram, two 300GB Sata disks with OS and user data, and a 2 TB play area on a pair of striped 1TB disks. Edison drives my left monitor, 1920x1440 24 bpp.

[Teradactyl?]Teryx mark 3

(named for the Dinosaucers character)

Teryx is a dual core single package Intel running at 2.4 GHz, three Gigabit ethernet ports, 6GB of ram, and two 300G Sata disks for OS and user data. Teryx drives my right display (1920x1440), and has my keyboard (a model M) and mouse (a mousesystems optical mouse (the kind with the reflective pad) from about 1986). My mouse has now become a challange: how long can I keep using it? It still working in 2010.

Teryx is my router-and-stuff machine, and the CPU you would be using if I give you an account. Teryx also runs the postscript interpreter for my printer (A Minolta magicolor 2300 DL color laser printer).

Penpen

(Named for the penguin in Evangelion)
Penpen is a Gateway laptop, with a pentium 3, 196 MB ram, 6GB disk, and PCMCIA ethernet, modem, 802.11, etc. Penpen lurks under my bed, for reading, and when I'm too lazy to get up. 1024x768 24 bpp LCD display, 100BT ethernet.

Reepicheep (mark 2)

(Named for the king of the mice of Narnia (Chronicles of Narnia) )
Reepicheep is an IBM T40 laptop with 60G of disk a 1G of ram, and 1024x768 24 bpp LCD display. Reepicheep is my portable computron source.

[Critter which looks like a Nerd (a type of candy)]bobDbob mark 4

(named for a creature my friend Jim drew in High school)
bobDbob is a dual core single package 3 GHz Xeon with 4GB of ram, and two 1 Gbit ethernet ports (one used). There is a 300G Sata disk for the OS, and then 8 1TB disks for my big filesystem, with approx 6.4 TB of usable space. All bobDbob does is serve the big filesystem.

Stereo

bobDbob mark 3 was reassigned to be the Stereo in 2009. It netboots off bobdbob (mark 4). It drives my stereo (hence the name...) and my big display (1280x1024 3 chip DLP projector I got off ebay). Perhaps it should be called TV...

There is a web server which you can use to tell the stereo to play various things. mpeg/ogg/raw/mod files will be on the stereo in the living room, mpeg/divx video will be presented on the TV. It is also the guest terminal, and has a monitor/keyboard/mouse on the end table by the couch.


Computers that have been decommissioned/traded:

[Critter which looks like a Nerd (a type of candy)]bobDbob mark 4

The CPU is an AMD Opteron at 2.2 GHz with 256MB of ram and gigabit ethernet. The OS disk is an 80 Gig Sata, and then there are eight 300G Sata disks for "the big filesystem", with a usable space of about 2TB.

Pinky

(Named for the other mouse who hangs around with the Brain)
Pinky lurks under my bed, and is the terminal for reading in bed. CPU is a 133 MHz Pentium, with 48MB ram, about 2G of IDE harddisk, and the usual complement of serial port, PCMCIA modem, PCMCIA 10BT ethernet, generic audio, and a 16 bpp 800x600 framebuffer.

[Critter which looks like a Nerd (a type of candy)]bobDbob mark 3

(named for a creature my friend Jim drew in High school)
The CPU is another AMD Athlon "1800", with 256MB of ram. IO is an Adaptec 2940UW, and 100Mbit ethernet, CDROM burner, scanner, tape drive. The OS disk is a 1GB scsi disk, there are then 6 80G IDE disks in a software raid-5 using vinum. bobDbob is the keeper of the "Hole", or my big archival filesystem. After the raid and filesystem overhead, I have about 277GB of usable space. It is on a five year mission to not forget anything, and do IO for the machine room (CDROM burner, scanner, palm pilot, etc).

Stereo mark 2

The stereo lives in the living room, netboots off of bobDbob, and gets to the audio/video library on bobdbob. The CPU is yet another AMD Athlon "1800", running at about 1500 MHz. It has 256MB of ram, ethernet, a BT848 frame grabber, an assortment of mpeg decoder cards, and CDROM and DVD drives.

There is a web server which you can use to tell the stereo to play various things. mpeg/ogg/raw/mod files will be on the stereo in the living room, mpeg/divx video will be presented on the TV. It is also the guest terminal, and has a monitor/keyboard/mouse on the end table by the couch.


Zarquon

(Named for a god in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Zarquon is a dual processor 450 MHz Pentium-3 with 1GB of ram, and five 9GB harddisks. Four of the five drives are striped togather into one filesystem for video capture. Other ports include 100BT ethernet, a generic soundcard, serial mouse, and a 32 bpp 1280x1024 framebuffer. Zarquon runs the left display on my desk, as well as the keyboard and mouse.

Adama

(named for the boomer in Bubble Gum Crash #2)
Adama is a Sun3/60 (68020 at 20 MHz) with 16 MB RAM,a cg4 frame buffer (1152x900x8 bpp, thats LOW res.) driving an old IBM RS6000 19" Trinitron (with a home-made sync adapter), on board ethernet, on board SCSI (though diskless at the moment), and 2 serial ports.

Riiya

(named for a werewolf in ChaCha)
Riiya is a decstation 5000/125, based on a 25MHz R3000 CPU, with 32MB RAM, 1 1G SCSI disk, ethernet (AUI), 1 serial, keyboard, mouse, 8 bpp 1024x876 frame buffer.

The Model 80

(no name)
This is an IBM PS/2 model 80, with an 386/16, 387, about 300 megs of ESDI disk space, an 8514 (1024x768, 8bpp) display, one serial, one parallel, PS/2 trackball. This is slightly higher than average computing, citra 1989: MSDOS 5.0, Windows 3.0. Its current function is to run the Hom program for Homology experiments.

Wombat

(Either the Australian creature, or the acronym Waste Of Money Brains And Time)
Wombat was a 3b2/300 with 30 megs of MFM disk space, and one meg of ram, running SVR3.1. He was later upgraded to 72 megs of MFM disk, 4 megs of ram (the maximum for a 3b2/300),and a new motherboard (making him a 3b2/310) and ran SVR3.2. He was acquired in August of 1991, and was my first Unix box.

Ryuuki

(named for a character in "Star Wars, Dark Force Rising", though spelled differently)
Ryuuki was bought over the net in November of 1992. He was also a 3b2/310, with 4 megs of ram, 100 megs of MFM disk space (one 30 meg drive, and 1 72 meg drive), and a 23 meg floppytape drive. With Ryuuki came a DMD5620 which is a windowing graphics terminal, and the WINS networking software (including the legendary SLIP driver, yes it does exist), so I got a pair of Ethernet boards, and became truly networked.

Mackie

(named for the brother of Dr. Sylia Stingray, leader of the Knight Sabers (Japanese Animation))
Mackie is a 3b2/300 which was assembled out of spare parts, he is pretty much the original Wombat.

rpicheep

(named for Reepicheep, King of the mice of Narnia (Chronicles of Narnia))
rpicheep is an AT&T 3b2/522 with 327 megs of SCSI diskspace, a 120 meg qic tape drive, 4 megs of ECC ram, an NI card (Ethernet), 2 PORTS boards (4 serial, one parallel each), and 2 EPORTS (8 serial each). The console is a vt220 clone, and I usually use a DMD5620 terminal.

rpicheep runs AT&T's SVR3.2.2, with Wollongong integrated networking (TCP/IP), including the legendary SLIP device driver. I also have X11R4, which I hope an X11R6 server will still talk to. rpicheep is physicly incapable of running MSdos (though I did get REALLY close to getting pcemu to run...). I consider this a feature.

Rpicheep was traded for keman in 3-1995 (SIGH).

[Teradactyl?]Teryx mark 2

(named for the Dinosaucers character)

Teryx is an AMD Athlon "1800", the true clock speed is closer to 1500 MHz, with 512MB RAM, an Adaptec 2940UW, a 2G disk, 2 4G disks, 3 100Mbit ethernet cards, BT848 frame grabber (for the web camera), and a 1280x1024x24bpp frame buffer. Teryx runs the right display on my desk (using x2x from zarquon), and is the router, firewall, web/email/whatever server, guest machine, etc.

[Teradactyl?]Teryx, mark 1

(named for the Dinosaucers character)
Teryx is a dual 100 Mhz "pentium" with 48MB RAM, 512K L2 cache. For storage: 2 660MB SCSI disks, a 120MB QIC drive, a 4G DAT drive, and a 2X CDROM, on an Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controler. For IO: an SMC etherpower PCI ethernet board, a Gravis Ultrasound, and a SoundBlaster sound board, 2 serial ports, 1 parallel port, and (drum roll) an 8 bit Mono hercules card.

This machine is headless, except when I'm beating my head against the setup programs. (EISA is a pain in the neck, but there are some problems I like to have. :-) Teryx Mark 2:

Teryx is an AMD Athlon "1800", the true clock speed is closer to 1500 MHz, with 512MB RAM, an Adaptec 2940UW, a 2G disk, 2 4G disks, 3 100Mbit ethernet cards, BT848 frame grabber (for the web camera), and a 1280x1024x24bpp frame buffer. Teryx runs the right display on my desk (using x2x from zarquon), and is the router, firewall, web/email/whatever server, guest machine, etc.

stegbot

(named for the character on Darkwing Duck)
Stegbot is a 486DX266 with 8 megs of ram, 120 megs of IDE diskspace, a 360K 5.25" floppy drive, 2 serial ports, one parallel port, one joystick port, a GUS sound board, and a NE2000 Ethernet board. Stegbot was intended to be an X terminal for my parents, but they were afraid. So I use him as a secondary processor (Headless).

Stegbot's case is made completely out of plexaglass, the only opaque parts are ones that had to be opaque (IE: screws, components).

[A blue dragon]keman

(named for a character from the book "The Elvenbane")
Keman is an HP9000/425 (68040 at 25 MHz) with 16 megs of ram, 660 megs of SCSI diskspace, a 2 Gig DAT drive (deceased, it eats tapes now...), an EISA bus (along with the native HP bus), and a hyperion display (19" 1280x1024x1). For IO: one serial, one parallel, Ethernet, and GPIB/HPIB/IEEE-488.

[Critter which looks like a Nerd (a type of candy)]bobDbob mark 2

(named for a creature my friend Jim drew in High school)
bobDbob is a 100 MHz "Pentium" with 340 megs of IDE diskspace, and 1 gig + 40 megs of SCSI diskspace on an Adaptec 2940, 32 megs of ram, 256K of level 2 cache, an SMC 10 Mbs ethernet card, an SMC 100 Mb/s ethernet card, board, 4 serial ports (one of which my optical mouse uses), 2 parallel ports, and a Matrox Millemium with 4MB of ram driving a Viewsonic 21 inch monitor.

KE4ILZ

(named for my amateur radio call sign)
This machine sometimes acts as a packet radio node (hence the name). It is a 386/16, with a 387, 4 megs of ram, 1.44MB 3.5" floppy drive, NE2000 Ethernet board, one serial, one parallel. This machine either runs Dos and KA9Q off a floppy with a really evil packet driver for a Baycom el-cheapo TNC (the dos NFS client gets in a fight with the KA9Q TCP/IP stack), or FreeBSD disklessly via NFS.

Scrappy

(named for the character on Scooby-Doo)
Scrappy is a 386SX/20 portable with 60 megs of IDE disk space, and one meg of ram. Because the memory is proprietary, and therefore mind-bogglingly expensive, he is probably doomed to run dos for the rest of his existence. Scrappy was handed down to my brother when I got bobDbob, but has since been returned, when my brother was infected with a macintosh.
Scrappy is currently hanging off a serial from Stegbot, and lives under my bed (so I can read in bed without having to print everything out).

Wopr

(named for the computer in Wargames)
Wopr is a Tadpole Sparcbook 1. Its based on a sparc processor, has 16MB RAM, 2 IDE hard disks (180MB and 1.4GB), ethernet (AUI), serial, PS2 keyboard/mouse (but not both), and a 640x480 gray scale LCD. Not a speed demon (feels about like a 486), but nice portable unix.
Teryx image Copyright Coca-Cola Communications
bobDbob image Copyright 1991 Jim Murphy
Keman image (which is really Alara (Keman's Mom) with the colors edited) copyright 1991 Boris (The Book is "The ElvenBane" ISBN 0-312-85106-5)
Shadow image Copyright 1995 Babylonian Productions ???