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Look what I found today!

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Dan Bissonnette

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Jul 10, 2015, 4:56:12 PM7/10/15
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$ork is knocking down a building to build a new facility. Step #1 is to
completely clean it out and assuage any HAZMAT concerns. The overhead
was a long-lost storage facility. An assistant of mine was called to
haul away a "computer".

He trucked it, and a bunch of other stuff, up the hill and we
inventoried. All just junk. But there was an interesting workstation-
size monster IBM Server. We go, "could this gizmo still work?!?"

It did! OS2-WARP! And the password was pasted on the side.

The troop of people through our office was epic, to see the relic. We
even got it on the 'net.


--
"You're having an internal argument with somebody named
DragonQueen42 - you're never going to win that argument."
- David Benioff, 'Game of Thrones' Producer

mikea

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Jul 10, 2015, 5:10:02 PM7/10/15
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Dan Bissonnette <dangbis...@gmail.com> wrote in <MPG.3009fb75...@news.giganews.com>:

> $ork is knocking down a building to build a new facility. Step #1 is to
> completely clean it out and assuage any HAZMAT concerns. The overhead
> was a long-lost storage facility. An assistant of mine was called to
> haul away a "computer".
>
> He trucked it, and a bunch of other stuff, up the hill and we
> inventoried. All just junk. But there was an interesting workstation-
> size monster IBM Server. We go, "could this gizmo still work?!?"
>
> It did! OS2-WARP! And the password was pasted on the side.
>
> The troop of people through our office was epic, to see the relic. We
> even got it on the 'net.

CONGRATULATIONS!

That may be one of the 10^N safest machines on the 'Net, for fairly small N.

--
"And why didn't the psychic who spammed me see her account going
away as a result?" -- me, after a complaint letter worked.

Luke

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Jul 12, 2015, 8:15:15 AM7/12/15
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On Fri, 10 Jul 2015 16:56:06 -0400, Dan Bissonnette wrote:

> But there was an interesting workstation-
> size monster IBM Server. We go, "could this gizmo still work?!?"
>
> It did! OS2-WARP! And the password was pasted on the side.
>
> The troop of people through our office was epic, to see the relic. We
> even got it on the 'net.

Awesome! Good work. Have fun tinkering.

mrob...@att.net

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Jul 21, 2015, 12:36:48 AM7/21/15
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Dan Bissonnette <dangbis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It did! OS2-WARP! And the password was pasted on the side.

Besides Warp, was there anything interesting on the disk? Either in
the "gee, we *wondered* where the original docs for $PRODUCT had got to"
sense, or the "uh, we already told the feds that we didn't have any of
those records anymore" sense?

Matt Roberds

Dan Bissonnette

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Jul 21, 2015, 5:37:40 PM7/21/15
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In article <moki62$7ak$3...@dont-email.me>, mrob...@att.net says...
Nah. Just the Ancient Crawling Horror of a satellite communications
system that appeared because $orkParent was of the opinion that the
internet was just a fad.

It could have been worse. They could have gone with AOL.

Koos van den Hout

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Jul 24, 2015, 5:21:00 AM7/24/15
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Dan Bissonnette <dangbis...@gmail.com> wrote in <MPG.301885b1f...@news.giganews.com>:

> Nah. Just the Ancient Crawling Horror of a satellite communications
> system that appeared because $orkParent was of the opinion that the
> internet was just a fad.

For some companies satellite communications is the most reliable and
consistently available option[1].

For these companies the regular sucking of updates by the megabyte must be
damn expensive.

[1] every Texaco tankstation I see in europe has a two-way dish on the
roof


Koos

--
Koos van den Hout Homepage: http://idefix.net/
PGP keyid DSS/1024 0xF0D7C263
Webprojects: Camp Wireless http://www.camp-wireless.org/
The Virtual Bookcase http://www.virtualbookcase.com/

David Scheidt

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Jul 24, 2015, 8:50:38 AM7/24/15
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Koos van den Hout <koos+new...@kzdoos.xs4all.nl> wrote:
:Dan Bissonnette <dangbis...@gmail.com> wrote in <MPG.301885b1f...@news.giganews.com>:

:> Nah. Just the Ancient Crawling Horror of a satellite communications
:> system that appeared because $orkParent was of the opinion that the
:> internet was just a fad.

:For some companies satellite communications is the most reliable and
:consistently available option[1].

:For these companies the regular sucking of updates by the megabyte must be
:damn expensive.

:[1] every Texaco tankstation I see in europe has a two-way dish on the
:roof

I used to run a service station with such a link. It was reliable. It
worked, without a single failure, for the several years I was around. I
did have to get on te roof and shovel snow off the dish once, though.
It was used exclusively for credit card transactions, and receiving
the daily batch reports. Typical credit card transaction is about 500
bytes; the batch report is a few kB. Software came via service guy who
installed it from disk. No idea what it cost; the oil company
provided it. (Which is a bonus for them, since they got a cut of all
card sales.) Most important feature was that it was fast, since the
link was always up, and sending data didn't require any connection
overhead. We had, for a while, a secondary card processor who we used
for non-gasoline transactions. It had a dial up connection, and was
much slower. An internet connection is faster than that, but still
slower than the satelite link.




--
sig 35

Alan J. Wylie

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Jul 25, 2015, 6:20:09 AM7/25/15
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David Scheidt <dsch...@panix.com> writes:

> I used to run a service station with such a link. It was reliable. It
> worked, without a single failure, for the several years I was around. I
> did have to get on te roof and shovel snow off the dish once, though.
> It was used exclusively for credit card transactions, and receiving
> the daily batch reports.

Remember, shiny side out

uggc://jjj.xzop.pbz/arjf/xp-cbyvpr-ubcr-gb-sbvy-arj-perqvg-pneq-fpnz-grpuavdhr/22079212

--
Alan J. Wylie http://www.wylie.me.uk/

Dance like no-one's watching.
Encrypt like everyone is.

David Scheidt

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Jul 25, 2015, 8:40:18 AM7/25/15
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Alan J. Wylie <al...@wylie.me.uk> wrote:
:David Scheidt <dsch...@panix.com> writes:

:> I used to run a service station with such a link. It was reliable. It
:> worked, without a single failure, for the several years I was around. I
:> did have to get on te roof and shovel snow off the dish once, though.
:> It was used exclusively for credit card transactions, and receiving
:> the daily batch reports.

:Remember, shiny side out

:uggc://jjj.xzop.pbz/arjf/xp-cbyvpr-ubcr-gb-sbvy-arj-perqvg-pneq-fpnz-grpuavdhr/22079212

huh. The thing we had complained when the link was unavailable, and
wouldn't process cards. Anything over the floor limit got a 'call for
auth'. (Snow blocking the dish was a regular thing when I started. I
only had to shovel once. That's what employees are for. I had the
oil company reinstall it on a higher mount. ) My bet is these stores
are just morons, or are complicit.

--
sig 113

Luke

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Jul 29, 2015, 4:57:34 PM7/29/15
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On Fri, 10 Jul 2015 16:56:06 -0400, Dan Bissonnette wrote:

> But there was an interesting workstation-
> size monster IBM Server. We go, "could this gizmo still work?!?"

In a similar scenario today I came across a NeXtstation model N1100.
Really want to try it out but don't have any cables capable of connecting
to the display port, which looks VGA but half as wide again. Amazed to
see it has an ethernet port on it.

Lawns 'R' Us

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Jul 29, 2015, 8:49:34 PM7/29/15
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8P8C, 10BASE5, 10BASE2, 10BROAD36, 1BASE5, StarLAN, LattisNet, FOIRL,
or...?

Peter H. Coffin

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Jul 29, 2015, 11:25:04 PM7/29/15
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I'd hate to see the monster of an adaptor necessary to make that port
drive a non-NeXT display. Those ports are weird. There's enough DC
running through it to power the CRT.

--
43. I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the
beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and
good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her
in on my plans. --Peter Anspach's Evil Overlord list
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