That’s slightly over 100 days of uptime. How is this special?
Serious question: How could this not be special?
2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
11–20 of 92 posts
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#12The last time I checked on a FreeBSD server running Apache httpd for a previous client, it had an uptime of about 4,000 days.
So here is the obligatory:
"Here's a nickle, kid. Get yourself a better computer."[0]
0 - https://web.archive.org/web/20190304153157im_/https://assets...
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's still beeping ... busy != dead. Right now it's getting hammered pretty hard. I haven't implemented the clustering and load balancing yet. It can serve 8 concurrent connections but that slows it down. It will queue a few more too; be patient and you will be rewarded.
It actually works for me if you just wait long enough for it load. Which, at this point, is very impressive.
I'm not getting a SYNACK back from it within the default firefox-on-linux timeout of 60 seconds. Guess I'm obliged now to run Wireshark for the next hour to prove a point just in case it does respond to that (interplanetary latency style), but I'm going to call that at least fairly dead
Edit: actually, I'm not sure how long my router will keep a half-open tcp connection in its state table. It may not show up in Wireshark on my laptop. 10 minutes in, no synack showing up: I'm calling it
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#14(Sorry, I forgot to preface this with Show HN) ** 2023-07-14 18:38 PDT The DOS machine is getting DoSed. It's still beeping and happy but it's busy. ** This website is hosted on a 39 year old PCjr running at 4.77Mhz and it has been running over 2,500 hours continuously now. No reboots or program restarts ... you can see the current runtime stats by visiting http://brutmanlabs.org/status . The machine specs are: - IBM…
A PCjr? That somehow makes this more funny than if it was a 5150 or something (but equally impressive).
I remember playing around with Xircom parallel port ethernet adapters and TCP/IP packet drivers (and corresponding applications) in the 90s on an old 286 laptop I still had. Almost exclusively used it as a client, though. Good times.
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#15The last time I checked on a FreeBSD server running Apache httpd for a previous client, it had an uptime of about 4,000 days. So here is the obligatory: "Here's a nickle, kid. Get yourself a better computer."[0] :-D 0 - https://web.archive.org/web/20190304153157im_/https://assets...
FreeBSD is crusty, but is it really bad enough to compare to DOS 5.02?
Besides, who needs 32 bits when 16 will do ...
(Not serious.)
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#16pfft...that is nothing. I was on a 286 running a DOS IRC client and managed to take back an IRC channel with more than 150 users that was previously taken over... ...no joke. However, in all seriousness: nice.
I have a small IRC client for that 286 if you still have it. Even has some Unicode support, but being limited to CP437 kind of limits it. ;-0
Did that client exist in the 90s? I, too, IRC'd on a 286 laptop with TCP/IP packet drivers in the 90s.
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#17(Sorry, I forgot to preface this with Show HN) ** 2023-07-14 18:38 PDT The DOS machine is getting DoSed. It's still beeping and happy but it's busy. ** This website is hosted on a 39 year old PCjr running at 4.77Mhz and it has been running over 2,500 hours continuously now. No reboots or program restarts ... you can see the current runtime stats by visiting http://brutmanlabs.org/status . The machine specs are: - IBM…
A PCjr? That somehow makes this more funny than if it was a 5150 or something (but equally impressive). I remember playing around with Xircom parallel port ethernet adapters and TCP/IP packet drivers (and corresponding applications) in the 90s on an old 286 laptop I still had. Almost exclusively used it as a client, though. Good times.
Yep, a PCjr. No parity bit on the memory even.
I have a love/hate relationship with the Xircom adapter. It's portable and great for machines without ISA slots, but the max throughput is about 40KB/sec. A nice, real ISA card like a WD8003 can do over 100KB/sec on the same machine.
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
It actually works for me if you just wait long enough for it load. Which, at this point, is very impressive.
I'm not getting a SYNACK back from it within the default firefox-on-linux timeout of 60 seconds. Guess I'm obliged now to run Wireshark for the next hour to prove a point just in case it does respond to that (interplanetary latency style), but I'm going to call that at least fairly dead Edit: actually, I'm not sure how long my router will keep a half-open tcp connection in its state table. It may not show up in Wires…
"Dead" for me is if it actually crashed and does not recover without interference. I'm not surprised that an 8088 (not even an 8086!) will either take a really long time to reply SYNACK, or just drop packets entirely when the queue is full, when hammered with HN levels of crowds.
It may be dead, but it also may just be busy.
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#19The last time I checked on a FreeBSD server running Apache httpd for a previous client, it had an uptime of about 4,000 days. So here is the obligatory: "Here's a nickle, kid. Get yourself a better computer."[0] :-D 0 - https://web.archive.org/web/20190304153157im_/https://assets...
FreeBSD is crusty, but is it really bad enough to compare to DOS 5.02? Besides, who needs 32 bits when 16 will do ... (Not serious.)
> Besides, who needs 32 bits when 16 will do ...
Hahaha, well played! :-)
Seriously, though, it is impressive to have a DOS machine running a web server in today's environment.
I assume dynamic content is produced via Sidekick[0]...
(ducks)
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
It actually works for me if you just wait long enough for it load. Which, at this point, is very impressive.
Yep, at this point it's just continually busy. For the next iteration I've got to put a better Ethernet card on it. The Xircom PE3-10BT device is nice because it's convenient, but the bandwidth would be 2x higher with a real Ethernet card on the bus. And normally this machine is idle so the speed and bandwidth are not a problem. Right now it's very popular. :)
What kind of speed does that Xircom get?
I don't know what's on the site, maybe it's busy uploading data to various people, but usually the original 10mbps ethernet is enough to serve most ~light websites (anything that is not as heavy as youtube or an image blog basically) to the hacker news homepage, and I'm not getting synacks so this is not the web server (layer 7) being slow