I've been shopping on ebay again, even though I shouldn't be. This time I bought 1GB (8 x 128MB) SIMMS for my Sun Ultra. Currently the machine has 128MB of RAM (8 x 16MB). SIMMS have to be installed in quads, that is 4 of the same type. I actually have a couple of 128MB SIMMS that will work in my Ultra, but they won't work until they're installed in a quad configuration.
I am reprising the Ultra for a couple of purposes, 1 to learn Solaris 9 (or 10), and to learn Java. I've been reading Cay Horstmann's Computing Concepts with Java Essentials. What make's Cay's book interesting for a hack like me is he has mentioned the SPARC processor a few times in the first chapter. It's interesting to learn about Java's cross-platform abilities when processors are compared instead of just saying that Java is a cross-platform programming language and then continuing on with code examples.
Solaris 9 is a dog on 128MB of RAM, particularly the Xserver. All the web-start stuff slows the system down even more. The new RAM is coming from the United States, so I'll probably have to wait a couple of weeks before it arrives. I'm itching for more. I actually looked at a quad port network card, but decided I really didn't need it. Perhaps when I learn NIS+ a bit better I'll replace my hub with the card.
I'm going to install Slow-laris tonight and set it up so I can SSH in. I decided on a new naming scheme for my network based on Anne Bishop's Blood Jewels series of fantasy novels. The temporary notebook is Lucivar, my 733MHz x86 is Janelle, and the Ultra is Saetan. I haven't decided on whether I'm putting the Sun Sparcstation 5 online again. I pilfered the 9.1GB SCA hard drive for my Ultra which has dual 9.1GB SCA SCSI hard drives. I already bought a Creator 3D card for the Ultra.
One of the things that's great about Sun is they still have a lot of information about their systems, even old boxes like the Ultra 2.
I also love looking at what people are doing with the Ultras. A place in Taiwan is using them for SNMP, Web, and DNS/NIS along with a Sparc 10 as a firewall. The department of engineering at the University of Cambridge at one point was using an Ultra 1 to run a Pro Engineer CAD package. At the Observatoire de Physique Du Globe De Clermont-Ferrand in France they're using a sun box for Inferometry. I was never into physics or most sciences while in school, but this looks like a really cool application. I'm somewhat interested in the telescope possibilities. I enjoy creating backgrounds from jpegs I've snapped with my Powershot A20 digital camera. It's only 2.1 mega-pixels, but it's more than enough to do 1600x1200. Having space scenes would be pretty cool.
There are so many possibilities for a box like this and here companies are filling landfills full of them...
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Red Hat 7.2 desktop
The aforementioned router served a couple of clients, one of which is the desktop to the left. For the longest time I ran Linux on a Pentium 200MHz box, but I think this is a photo of my next system, a 1.4GHz AMD Athlon (before all the Athlon XP/64 buzz). Notice the Red Hat box beside the computer :-)
This was my other system, a Thinkpad 755C, aka butterfly keyboard. For a Pentium 75 it was a pretty cool notebook. I ran Debian and FreeBSD on it with Window Maker as the window manager.
My first Linux Router...
I was organizing my photographs using f-spot when I came across a photograph of the first Linux router I ever built. I'd bought an old IBM Pentium 133MHz box - pretty big for a router, and stuck in a couple of network cards.
The router ran Red Hat Linux version 7.1. I was so impressed with version 7.1 that I ended up buying Red Hat 7.2. John Van Ostrand, from Netdirect, helped me get all the ipchains/iptables rules set up (I was pretty green about security back then). Thanks John. The router never had any downtime the 1 1/2 years it was in service.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Palm not allowing customers to download HotSync for new Palm T|X
Time to burn some bridges again, the victim this time, Palm, Inc. So here's the story:
On Saturday I went out and bought Palm's new Palm T|X Palm Pilot. Now I know Palm is hurting pretty bad, Windows-enabled devices have displaced Palm as the undisputed king of the hand-held market. And given my experience with my Palm m125 I really shouldn't have considered Palm at all... But I did, and I walked out with a Palm T|X. The T|X is a wonderful machine, WiFi and Bluetooth enabled, nice high resolution colour screen, the latest Palm OS... the problem, I cannot download the HotSync software like I could for my Palm m125, which means I can't hotsync with my computer at work until I remember to bring my original CD.
It might not seem like a big deal, Palm should be allowed to protect their software interest. But it's enough to make me want to pirate the software. I wanted to have all my contacts today, not tomorrow. And what if the software disc was scratched? If you've checked out Palm's web site, e-mail support isn't clearly evident. And phoning, I'm sure the experience would be like every other company, you get on the phone, get the run around to 2 or 3 different departments before they say "we're sorry, we can't help you." Even if they could ship another CD, it would be weeks, if not months, and it would likely cost the consumer more money... at nearly $400CDN, I would expect much better service from Palm.
There are ways Palm could provide the software to customers, i.e. requiring a serial number, but they refuse to do so... so you know what I say, pirate away!
On Saturday I went out and bought Palm's new Palm T|X Palm Pilot. Now I know Palm is hurting pretty bad, Windows-enabled devices have displaced Palm as the undisputed king of the hand-held market. And given my experience with my Palm m125 I really shouldn't have considered Palm at all... But I did, and I walked out with a Palm T|X. The T|X is a wonderful machine, WiFi and Bluetooth enabled, nice high resolution colour screen, the latest Palm OS... the problem, I cannot download the HotSync software like I could for my Palm m125, which means I can't hotsync with my computer at work until I remember to bring my original CD.
It might not seem like a big deal, Palm should be allowed to protect their software interest. But it's enough to make me want to pirate the software. I wanted to have all my contacts today, not tomorrow. And what if the software disc was scratched? If you've checked out Palm's web site, e-mail support isn't clearly evident. And phoning, I'm sure the experience would be like every other company, you get on the phone, get the run around to 2 or 3 different departments before they say "we're sorry, we can't help you." Even if they could ship another CD, it would be weeks, if not months, and it would likely cost the consumer more money... at nearly $400CDN, I would expect much better service from Palm.
There are ways Palm could provide the software to customers, i.e. requiring a serial number, but they refuse to do so... so you know what I say, pirate away!
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Soltek 85DRV5 strain
I occasionally read comp.os.linux.advocacy, a newsgroup dedicated to the promotion of the Linux operating system. Lately there has been a lot of "trolling for flames" by what looks to be someone under various aliases, but mainly coming from the same free news host. One of this troll's arguments against Linux is that you "just install Windows XP and it works." I've heard this argument before, and I'm sorry to say it doesn't hold water. I'm not saying this because I'm a Linux guy who hates Windows, I'm saying this as a technician who runs into problems with Windows XP installations. Lately I've been dealing with just such an example:
I customer brought in a Pentium 4 which kept rebooting on him. My first thought was spyware. There was spyware on the system, but the customer decided they just wanted a fresh Windows XP Home install anyway. (They actually had their original disc and license - a nice change from most people I have to turn away) Long story short, a fresh install of Windows XP Home didn't solve the rebooting problem.
To diagnose the problem I first tried running a few tools to test the memory and the client's hard drive, both passed all tests with flying colours. The key seemed to be that the system only rebooted under Windows XP, anything else (Linux Live CDs) had no problem.
After booting the system to Windows I got a screen dump with the following (edited for brevity) error:
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
*** STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x00000002, 0x0000000C, 0x00000001, 0xF84CE403)
*** atapi.sys - Address F84CE403 base at F84CE000, Datestamp 367d83e5
A little investigation (Google) turned up that the problem was most likely Windows driver related. Taking the advice of one of the forum members I removed the network card and the modem from the system. Next reboot Windows XP loaded with errors, but did not reboot. I popped back in the network card, same result, XP seemed to load with an error, but it didn't restart the system unit. I decided to take the opportunity to run the Windows Updates.
After the updates were completed I shut down the system (lunch time, and I wanted to be around in case there was a hardware/heat problem - I'd already checked the system temperature a few times; but it never hurts to be cautious). When I restarted Windows rebooted. Damn! I was hoping the problem was not NIC related. But the next reboot the system seemed fine, so I tried rebooting a couple more times - no problems, not even a Windows error message.
The system has been running in XP for about 1/2 hour now, still minus the modem. The problem seems to be an issue with the PCTel modem, likely, as the board suggested, a driver issue. Others I've chatted with have a very negative view of PCTel-driven modems.
For the record, the motherboard is a SOLTEK 85DRV5 with a VT8753 Apollo P4X266 controller (VIA chipset). There is a GeForce4 MX 440 [NV17.2] with 64MB RAM in the AGP slot. The NIC has a RealTek 81390 chip. Without the PCTel (PCT789T-C1 chip) modem, the system seems to be running well.
Though the system has no problems running Linux from a Live CD, it's not the 100% Windows-compatible zealots love to believe. No operating system is perfect. I think it's more a matter of people choosing an operating system that they feel more comfortable with, or know they can get help with. I don't believe that religious wars over operating systems help anyone. Those people who spend all their time, even those paid by companies to bad mouth other companies, do more harm to themselves and their respective companies than they really do to hinder the other side. Propogation of bad mouthing just makes the fanatics on both sides become more fanatical.
Next steps are to ensure the Soltek motherboard is updated and all drivers are working 100%; then I'll try reinserting the modem.
I customer brought in a Pentium 4 which kept rebooting on him. My first thought was spyware. There was spyware on the system, but the customer decided they just wanted a fresh Windows XP Home install anyway. (They actually had their original disc and license - a nice change from most people I have to turn away) Long story short, a fresh install of Windows XP Home didn't solve the rebooting problem.
To diagnose the problem I first tried running a few tools to test the memory and the client's hard drive, both passed all tests with flying colours. The key seemed to be that the system only rebooted under Windows XP, anything else (Linux Live CDs) had no problem.
After booting the system to Windows I got a screen dump with the following (edited for brevity) error:
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
*** STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x00000002, 0x0000000C, 0x00000001, 0xF84CE403)
*** atapi.sys - Address F84CE403 base at F84CE000, Datestamp 367d83e5
A little investigation (Google) turned up that the problem was most likely Windows driver related. Taking the advice of one of the forum members I removed the network card and the modem from the system. Next reboot Windows XP loaded with errors, but did not reboot. I popped back in the network card, same result, XP seemed to load with an error, but it didn't restart the system unit. I decided to take the opportunity to run the Windows Updates.
After the updates were completed I shut down the system (lunch time, and I wanted to be around in case there was a hardware/heat problem - I'd already checked the system temperature a few times; but it never hurts to be cautious). When I restarted Windows rebooted. Damn! I was hoping the problem was not NIC related. But the next reboot the system seemed fine, so I tried rebooting a couple more times - no problems, not even a Windows error message.
The system has been running in XP for about 1/2 hour now, still minus the modem. The problem seems to be an issue with the PCTel modem, likely, as the board suggested, a driver issue. Others I've chatted with have a very negative view of PCTel-driven modems.
For the record, the motherboard is a SOLTEK 85DRV5 with a VT8753 Apollo P4X266 controller (VIA chipset). There is a GeForce4 MX 440 [NV17.2] with 64MB RAM in the AGP slot. The NIC has a RealTek 81390 chip. Without the PCTel (PCT789T-C1 chip) modem, the system seems to be running well.
Though the system has no problems running Linux from a Live CD, it's not the 100% Windows-compatible zealots love to believe. No operating system is perfect. I think it's more a matter of people choosing an operating system that they feel more comfortable with, or know they can get help with. I don't believe that religious wars over operating systems help anyone. Those people who spend all their time, even those paid by companies to bad mouth other companies, do more harm to themselves and their respective companies than they really do to hinder the other side. Propogation of bad mouthing just makes the fanatics on both sides become more fanatical.
Next steps are to ensure the Soltek motherboard is updated and all drivers are working 100%; then I'll try reinserting the modem.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
If you've never ventured outside of x86 land...
If you've never ventured outside of x86 land you're missing some real treats. Over the past few years I've cobbled together enough parts to make 2 Sun Microsystems computers, one a Sun Sparcstation 5, the other a Sun Ultra 2. Why are these ancient systems cool? (The Sparc 5 is 110MHz and the Ultra 2 is 200MHz) They're cool because some of the things you can do with them that you can't do with a x86 without using external software. For example: STOP + A key will bring up a prompt where you can do all kinds of cool things, such as probe all SCSI devices, check RAM to see if it's okay. You can of course do these things using software on x86, but on my Sun boxes it's built into the instructions on the system itself. I don't need to run an operating system to diagnose problems on the box -- pretty cool.
The other thing that's cool is 64-bit. Yes, my 200MHz Ultra 2 is a 64-bit box. It can hold 1GB of RAM, and it's dual processor capable. Not bad for a $20CDN ebay purchase. (I spent more buying the keyboard and mouse for it).
If you've never ventured out of x86 land, I strongly recommend you try it... just for the pleasure of trying something outside the norm.
The other thing that's cool is 64-bit. Yes, my 200MHz Ultra 2 is a 64-bit box. It can hold 1GB of RAM, and it's dual processor capable. Not bad for a $20CDN ebay purchase. (I spent more buying the keyboard and mouse for it).
If you've never ventured out of x86 land, I strongly recommend you try it... just for the pleasure of trying something outside the norm.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
AOpen AX6BC motherboard and Linux
Last Friday I was working with some volunteers at The Working Centre. My plan was to show how easy it was to install Ubuntu Linux. Much to my dismay I ended up doing a "Bill Gates," because the AOpen wouldn't even get to the Ubuntu install startup. I did a little checking, and found a site that seemed to imply the BIOS might be flaky. We tried a few machines, and all except one had the same result. One machine I did manage to install Ubuntu on.
As it turns out, the problem was indeed the BIOS. AOpen motherboards with the model AOpen AX6BC version R2.10, dated 1998, seem to have an issue with operating systems other than Microsoft Windows. I checked the AOpen web site, but there was no mention of Linux issues. I found a newer BIOS for the AX6BC, version R2.59. As per AOpen's instructions I booted to a command prompt, and ran the BIOS update from floppy.
The BIOS update seemed to go perfect. When I rebooted there was a CMOS checksum error. At first I thought I'd go into the BIOS and see if there was somewhere to change the checksum. I skimmed the BIOS very quickly - no go. As it turns out, all I had to do was press F1 to Continue. The next reboot the CMOS error was gone.
As it turns out, the problem was indeed the BIOS. AOpen motherboards with the model AOpen AX6BC version R2.10, dated 1998, seem to have an issue with operating systems other than Microsoft Windows. I checked the AOpen web site, but there was no mention of Linux issues. I found a newer BIOS for the AX6BC, version R2.59. As per AOpen's instructions I booted to a command prompt, and ran the BIOS update from floppy.
The BIOS update seemed to go perfect. When I rebooted there was a CMOS checksum error. At first I thought I'd go into the BIOS and see if there was somewhere to change the checksum. I skimmed the BIOS very quickly - no go. As it turns out, all I had to do was press F1 to Continue. The next reboot the CMOS error was gone.
Friday, January 27, 2006
More on the Ultra 2
It looks like the Ultra 2 is going to be an ongoing project. I may run a dual-boot system with Solaris and Linux on it, but I think I might revert to Solaris 8 in hopes the performance is slightly better on my low memory.
At the moment a broken version of Debian Woody is installed on the hard drives. (4% and 1% use on the 9.1GB drives - pretty slim!) I downloaded Gentoo, and while I found it a pain to install on my notebook, which is really my lifeblood of computer systems, I have the time to play with it on the Ultra, and I like the idea of rolling my own custom kernels on this unusual box. My only concern is what will happen when I add a second processor; I'm guessing it'll just be a simple matter of a recompile - no big deal.
I have to say that I am really impressed with what Gentoo looks like on the console of this box. I don't think I've seen prettier console colours since my days of running a Bulletin Board System. Another cool aspect of the Gentoo minimal live CD is that it seems to have detected the onboard sound AND the Sun Turbo GX card, which I had looked up in preparation for a more difficult install. And while Gentoo will probably be a lot more reading than a Debian install, I expect the result will be a much nicer system, better tuned to my resources.
I've decided to use the Ultra 2 to serve up a simple web site, and to learn Python on. At some point I want to start developing games using the pygame library. The pygame web site shows a lot of pretty cool looking games - look out Roberta Williams! This latest bout of programming euphoria brought about by the book Masters of Doom which documents id's rise to the top of the shareware, and retail gaming world.
Well, it's 5am, so I'm not adding any links - I really need sleep, big day ahead at 7:30!
At the moment a broken version of Debian Woody is installed on the hard drives. (4% and 1% use on the 9.1GB drives - pretty slim!) I downloaded Gentoo, and while I found it a pain to install on my notebook, which is really my lifeblood of computer systems, I have the time to play with it on the Ultra, and I like the idea of rolling my own custom kernels on this unusual box. My only concern is what will happen when I add a second processor; I'm guessing it'll just be a simple matter of a recompile - no big deal.
I have to say that I am really impressed with what Gentoo looks like on the console of this box. I don't think I've seen prettier console colours since my days of running a Bulletin Board System. Another cool aspect of the Gentoo minimal live CD is that it seems to have detected the onboard sound AND the Sun Turbo GX card, which I had looked up in preparation for a more difficult install. And while Gentoo will probably be a lot more reading than a Debian install, I expect the result will be a much nicer system, better tuned to my resources.
I've decided to use the Ultra 2 to serve up a simple web site, and to learn Python on. At some point I want to start developing games using the pygame library. The pygame web site shows a lot of pretty cool looking games - look out Roberta Williams! This latest bout of programming euphoria brought about by the book Masters of Doom which documents id's rise to the top of the shareware, and retail gaming world.
Well, it's 5am, so I'm not adding any links - I really need sleep, big day ahead at 7:30!
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Updates and Sun Ultra Enterprise 2 active
I took a Geek test today and fared slightly above average. I knew one of the l33t questions, but I couldn't even be bothered to google the ROT question.
And a quick note that I finally got a hard drive for my Sun Ultra 2 Enterprise, a 9.1GB SCSI drive. I put Solaris 9 on it last night - a very long install. More later this evening.
And a quick note that I finally got a hard drive for my Sun Ultra 2 Enterprise, a 9.1GB SCSI drive. I put Solaris 9 on it last night - a very long install. More later this evening.
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