Active Projects: Project SunBurn
March 18th, 2006: Apart from the Model 4P and Model 100 diaries, there's not much going on. Tomorrow I'll be downloading Solaris 10 for my Ultra 5 system (aka "Cinq"), so I can use my USB 2.0 card under Solaris. It'll be nice to get back into a Unix environment again, it's been a number of months since I last used Hidamari or Belgium!
Luxembourg is still in heavy rotation as my main system. I absolutely love this machine! It's pretty quick for a system it's age (10 years), and has regularily outperformed some of my other Windows PCs (Switzerland and my late PII-300)! I've toyed with the idea of putting in a faster PCI video card, firewire card, and an ATA133 controller so I can use larger drives, but can't afford it right now. It'd be neat, though... Wish Luxembourg still had that 20Gb drive inside. I miss mastering VCDs with the system.
December 4th, 2005: Just bought
a pair of
128Mb SIMMs (one for Vier [my Mac LC475], one for a spare) on eBay, but
it wouldn't fit into Vier!
So, I popped the pair into Mothra, and the system recognized the
RAM! So now my Power Mac 6100 has (along with the built-in 8Mb)
264Mb RAM! Not bad for a project designated "inactive"...
I've also found
copies
of both Connectix Ram Doubler AND Speed Doubler for $5 CAD, so I'll be
installing those on my plethora of 68K Powerbooks! Apart from
that,
my three other active projects are going to be pushed back somewhat
owing
to some financial difficulties. There will likely be no new
acquisitions
until at LEAST the middle of January '06, either...
I installed Solaris 8 on Hidamari, mostly as a test, and it works nicely...actually a bit faster (and a GREAT deal more stable) than Redhat 6.2... can't wait to see how Solaris 8 performs on SunBurn when all my parts arrive! See the above link for details.
I've also decided to buy a new "main" computer next year. Right now, I'm leaning toward a Sun Blade system running Solaris 10, and that likely won't change... unless we find a Sun Enterprise system cheap enough... actually, I DID have the opportunity to pick up FOUR Sun Ultra Enterprise 3000 systems for $20 a pop, unfortunately, the lady selling them couldn't confirm a shipping quote before the auction ended... not her fault though, it WAS Thanksgiving weekend in the States, after all! My cat getting sick and requiring hospitalization didn't help things, either...
Ah well, there will always be more Sun systems out there...
CJ
12/04/05
August 27th, 2005: I just sacrificed Belgium's 40Gb hard drive to the Mame Box project, so I am now without a Linux box. No biggie, I fired up Mecha-CJ (my Power Mac 7200) and am quite happy. I picked up an Apple 17" Multiple Scan monitor for two whole dollars at the Salvation Army Thrift Store and it goes quite nicely with Mecha-CJ. As you may have noticed, I've been slowly updating the site, changing a few things here and there, and actually UPDATING my project pages... I have three projects going at the moment, click on the links above for details.
I'm also in the process of scanning and archiving some of my old manuals and documents, which is another reason I'm using Mecha-CJ... it's the only Mac I have that has a scanner! Suppose I could hook the scanner up to my G3, but why? Anyhow, once I have a few things scanned, I'm going to start a Document Library somewhere on the site. I may have to upgrade our Tripod account in order to deal with increased storage and bandwidth... but rest assured, I'll eat the cost on that. These docs are hard to come by, and if it helps ONE PERSON, it'll be worth it! It's the Thugs' way of giving back to the "retro" computer community that's helped us out so many times!
CJ
08/27/2005