So how do you apply the latest DOS security patches without rebooting?
2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
61–70 of 92 posts
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#62The machine continues to receive the hug of death .. especially with our friendly Europeans waking up. Have faith, it's still running. (And it's been surviving like this for four hours now.) I've turned down the logging level a little bit and turned off the beeper. On this machine, a 50ms beep on the motherboard buzzer is 50ms of delay. :)
I very friendly opened the link, and it is still serving pages. The images are pretty slow to load, though. While reading the page, I thought it was just text, but then suddenly a banner appeared.
Great demo of what such a machine can do, and how much we take our 3GHz, 12 core machines for granted.
BTW, how do you keep it dust-free?
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that the original PCjr keyboard was notorious for being terrible. One of the major flaws that helped making that system a flop.
What were the other major flaws?
* No standard ISA slots, instead a bulky and expensive ”sidecar” system
* Partially incompatible with regular IBM PC software
* Max 128K RAM
IBM likely did this stuff on purpose to avoid cannibalizing PC sales, but it ended up killing the Jr. Later on Tandy would borrow the PCjr sound and graphics hardware (superior to a normal CGA PC/XT) for a line of more successful personal computers.
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#64Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my friends was way ahead of the rest of us in 1987, and bought a V20 to upgrade his Tandy computer. He works for a telcom now. Nice to see one still churning away.
I bought my first NEC V20 in 1986 or 1987. It was my first time touching the motherboard of a computer which made it nerve wracking, but they were very popular at the time. I bought mine mail order through the Exec PC BBS, which I think was in Chicago.
Is there any PCjr software that lets you use the 8080 emulation mode of the V20 (i.e. for running CP/M software)?
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
What were the other major flaws?
* No standard ISA slots, instead a bulky and expensive ”sidecar” system * Partially incompatible with regular IBM PC software * Max 128K RAM IBM likely did this stuff on purpose to avoid cannibalizing PC sales, but it ended up killing the Jr. Later on Tandy would borrow the PCjr sound and graphics hardware (superior to a normal CGA PC/XT) for a line of more successful personal computers.
> * Max 128K RAM
IBM sold a 128K memory expansion sidecar to bring it to 256K. There is also apparently a way to swap in denser RAM chips to make it 512K (640K total).
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#67The machine continues to receive the hug of death .. especially with our friendly Europeans waking up. Have faith, it's still running. (And it's been surviving like this for four hours now.) I've turned down the logging level a little bit and turned off the beeper. On this machine, a 50ms beep on the motherboard buzzer is 50ms of delay. :)
I think it's impressive how your site's managed to stay online when many sites hosted on much more powerful hardware haven't been able to handle HN frontpage levels of traffic.
The power of good old static sites. I saw some number of the amount of electrical power going to web servers and it was like single digit percents.
The js-web is a huge waste environmentaly and it is sad since js is mostly used to spy and show ads.
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#68That’s slightly over 100 days of uptime. How is this special?
100+ days of runtime on nearly 40 year old hardware not designed as a server exposed to all of the garbage coming in on port 80. Remember, this is a home computer from the mid 1980s. This thing is way outside of it's duty cycle. And the software is holding up pretty well too, even during what is effectively a DoS attack on a DOS machine.
Wow expectations sure have come down! When that computer was new, people had uptimes measured in years, 100 days was pedestrian.
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#69Could this claim the title of “oldest host on the public internet serving traffic”?
At first I thought “~100 days, so what?” - but that was before I knew this was an 8088 managing to hold up to even just the background noise of the modern net (portscans, etc). It’s surviving being slashdotted by HN. Very impressive.
Re: 2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
100+ days of runtime on nearly 40 year old hardware not designed as a server exposed to all of the garbage coming in on port 80. Remember, this is a home computer from the mid 1980s. This thing is way outside of it's duty cycle. And the software is holding up pretty well too, even during what is effectively a DoS attack on a DOS machine.
Wow expectations sure have come down! When that computer was new, people had uptimes measured in years, 100 days was pedestrian.
And we were all on HN 40 years ago huh?