Modified 2005-02-07 09:01
I really like to play around with computers, and I also like older UNIX-type machines. Luckily, I've managed to get my hands on some older hardware from different sources. Total cost is 200 crowns so far, which is about as much as you'd pay for the average night at the pub.
I am the happy owner of 5 computers: Satsumas, Declas, Sparris (not used at the moment) Spelevinken and Compis. I also have a mobile phone called "Mobbe", which is an Ericsson s868.
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The unfortunate Sparris and the much healthier Declas are shown here.
You might wonder about the name Declas. Well. There's a Swedish name Niklas, which combined with DEC gives you Declas. Declas runs Linux, and is pretty cool at that too. You can look at a bootlog here
If you look carefully on the first line in the log, you'll notice the command >>boot [...], which is the boot-command run from the DECstation PROM (BIOS). In this way, Declas boots over the network with tftp. That's cool. Declas lives on the local network, and is not reachable from the outside.
Linux on the DECstation 5000 works rather well. It's now equipped with a small RedHat based distro, and runs and compiles most kinds of programs (I've compiled my TT-News and FClock programs for it, available as RPMs from their respective pages). I'm running the 2.4.0-test9 kernel (from Karels site) on it, and it seems good. The DECstation locks up in some circumstances (compiling some stuff), but otherwise it seems fairly stable. I'm running it without the harddrives active, which makes it very quiet. I'd just need some cabling for the monitor and a keyboard to make it a pretty nice X-terminal.
I'll post some pictures of Declas and Sparris as soon as they are finished (no digital camera here!). For more information about Linux on DECstations, you should visit Karels DECstation Linux pages, an excellent resource with HOWTOs and other stuff that got me started with installing Linux on my DEC. Karels page updates often too.
I've also found the NetBSD page to be a valuable resource, the relevant port for DECstations is called PMAX. Here you can find things like which hardware is available/supported, installation instructions for NetBSD and much other things. The NetBSD/PMAX mailing list is also a great resource.
Finally, a tip for users with Debian on their main machine: Do a apt-get tftpd, and not just tftp. This delayed my DEC-installation by MANY hours. Brown paper bag if you know what I mean... :-) (You'll also need to apt-get bootp and nfs-server, but just follow Karels pages and you should have it running in no time).
There are a couple of links worth mentioning when it comes to Linux on DECstations. Especially Karels site is great for beginners.
I've recently bought a portable computer, namely a Compaq LTE 5400 named Compis. Nerds in Sweden will know where I got the name from (of course Compaq/Compis is rather like each other too). It has a 150 Mhz Pentium processor, 32 Mb RAM and a 2.1 Gb harddrive.
As you might suspect, I run GNU/Linux on it, Debian 2.2r2 to be more precise. I'll use it mainly when I go somewhere, or just to be able to do serious computing in the living room :-). Installing Debian on it was a bit tricky, Linux didn't like the CD-ROM drive in the docking station, so I had to reboot to get it running. Anyhow, I installed it through my "firewall" (Satsumas), and it's now running perfectly. I've removed a lot of, for a laptop, unnecessary daemons and configured X-Windows with Fvwm2. I'm also using noflushd to spin down the disk more often to save battery. It feels much faster than it's 150 Mhz rating promises - it hardly ever touches the swap disk even when running Emacs, X and other programs.
Now I'll just have to find a NES emulator that runs on a 150Mhz processor full screen at an acceptable speed. In Linux, of course :-). Compis is on view below. The text on the screen is my Human Geography thesis, and most of it was indeed written on Compis.
Spelevinken is a Sun SPARCclassic "lunchbox" style computer. Spelevinken can be seen together with everything else (all the other mess) below. Spelevinken is very cute.
Televinken is a well known tv-figure in Sweden - Televinken + SPARC = Spelevinken (oh well...). You can look at a bootlog here
Spelevinken is used as a X-terminal, previously running the SLXT 0.7a Linux "distribution", but now running NetBSD 1.5.1. Spelevinken does in fact mostly act as an extra screen for my desktop, using x2x to receive input from my main keyboard and mouse. Thus - I'm writing this on Spelevinken and viewing the results on Satsumas.
SLXT is a minimal X-terminal package for SPARCs. It only contains the bare essentials (a kernel and an X-server, plus files and programs needed for those) and runs diskless over nfs. The development versions comes in at 18 Mb unpacked on the server. The webpage seems down or dead, unfortunately.
My NetBSD install comes in at around 70 megabytes, so its a bit larger than the previous SLXT install. I guess that it would be possible to cut the size down quite a bit by removing unused components, but I might just find some other use for Spelevinken with NetBSD. It does, after all, run the ssh daemon and is certainly capable of other things. It also has plenty of free memory left (about 10 of its 24 Mb, with the X-server running).
Sparris is a Sun SPARCstation 1 with a blazing Sparc @ 20 Mhz and 12 Mb of memory (and 2x105 Mb SCSI harddrives). Unfortunately, Sparris has a dead NVRAM, which for one thing means that it cant store it's network-adress. Pictures of Sparris, together with Declas can be found above.
Sparris can boot, but you'll have to reenter it's MAC-address on every boot - I have booted the SLXT "distribution" on Sparris, and it works great as an X-terminal. So if I got a new NVRAM chip and a monitor for Sparris it would make a nice X-terminal, apart from the noicy fan. Sparris now gets its power from Declas, so I'd have to find another electrical outlet too... :-)
I might very well try NetBSD on Sparris as well, should be fun. :-)
I got Sparris and Declas for 200 skr (about 20 US$). I found both of them laying outside one of our neighbors. I passed them a note saying I would like to buy them if they wouldn't use them - and that was ok with them. I'm not sure about the origins of Sparris (I've been unable to check the contents of it's disks), but it probably once stayed at LDC (Lunds DataCentral). Declas at least boots Ultrix in single mode with some info that ties it to the LDC.
You can click here to see some statistics on the page.
