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Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

retrocomputing.stackexchange.com

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Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#91

Post by comex »

MBCook wrote: post #67
H8crilA wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why this is downvoted, the comment is on point. Is it because it is partly gpt-generated content? I wonder if patching memory worked in the debugger, if not this would have to be done by manually editing the kernel file with IDA or something, and rebooting the machine. But in either case this is a good way to find the problem.

That’s likely. ChatGPT is not reliable, dumping its explanation of an issue isn’t valuable. It’s noise. Everything in the comment before that was great, no reason vote it down for that.

True, although in this case the ChatGPT explanation seems to be mostly accurate.

The one dubious point is the definition of "bisect". The definition is completely accurate in this context. But the sentence after the definition starts with "In this context,", implying that the definition itself should be relatively context-independent. Yet the term "bisect" in programming is more commonly used to refer to something slightly different: dividing some code's commit history into parts, not the code itself.

Also, several of the explanations are wordy and uninsightful, though not false.

…Admittedly, this is all beside the point. ChatGPT output carries a high risk of being inaccurate, so even if it's accurate in some specific case, readers have no way of knowing that. Which means that you shouldn't post ChatGPT output unless you can personally vouch for its accuracy, but in that case why use ChatGPT at all? Still, in this case I'll retrospectively vouch for it.

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#92

Post by jandrese »

dboreham wrote: post #62
Circuitstorm513 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier versions of Windows (98? 95?) also used to share things like drives (C$, D$) and printers with the dial-up connection by default. I remember connecting to a printer of a classmate over the internet and printing a page, to his surprise. All you needed was the IP, which was trivial to get from ICQ, back in the days.

There was a time when you could SMB mount shares from servers at MS over the public internet (and e.g. do things like download alphas and betas that were not visible on the ftp server).

I remember early Bitcoin exchanges that had everything stolen because they left all of their unencrypted private keys on SMB shares that were left visible to the Internet. IIRC this is what finally took down MtGox, almost 20 years after the release of Windows 95. Some people never learn.

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#93

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

keepamovin wrote: post #54

Ah, the retro-computing rabbit hole. Harmlessly divorced from any real-world consequences, but truly satisfying nonetheless. A real honey trap for nerds. I just had to click that 6 more comments expander

Well, the material in the article is borderline relevant today too.

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#94

Post by technothrasher »

switchbak wrote: post #89
keepamovin wrote: post #54

Ah, the retro-computing rabbit hole. Harmlessly divorced from any real-world consequences, but truly satisfying nonetheless. A real honey trap for nerds. I just had to click that 6 more comments expander

I look back to the computers before my time - the PET's and such, and I think it'd be fun to play with them. Or maybe an old IRIX box. But a 486?? That brings back too many memories of blue screens and waiting forever because we couldn't afford memory and was thus swapping to disk. Still too soon for me, I suppose.

I went back and booted my old Indigo from back in the day, as well as an old Sun 3/80 recently. It wasn't as great as I expected it to be, and all the annoyances from when I used to do actual work on them came flooding back quickly. Nostalgia is a heck of a drug.

I still reserve the PET as a perfect machine because 1) it's the first machine I really used as a kid, and 2) I haven't yet been foolish enough to try and go back to one in over 40 years now.

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#95

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

smolder wrote: post #76
jcpham2 wrote: post #71

FWIW these slotket adapters and such for compatibility on the right boards, usually Abit, Asus, and maybe even MSI back then, Well they had REAL overclocking abilities - How fast is your RAM and what kind of clock settings can the motherboard get away with in terms of multipliers? This was the earlyish days of overclocking - Celerons and Pentium IIs I once had a Celeron 600 in one adapter for compatibility and then t…

Overclocking was fun, but I'm also glad modern CPUs can precisely control clocks and voltages to make use of what used to be safety margin.

Yeah, today it is even more fun. I underclocked my alder lake, now it consumes 10% less power at 100% load.

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#96

Post by Dwedit »

H8crilA wrote: post #19
tzahifadida wrote: post #5

I build a port check way back to determine if services are up. It crashed half the company by simply opening a few tcp ports to the machines. Ridiculous days :)

Remember when Win95 could be crashed or even rooted just by pinging it the right way? We really have come a long way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_of_death I also remember SMB vulnerabilities that stayed unpatched for years on some machines. That was already when Metasploit existed, so you could inject VNC into most Windows hosts on local network with just a few commands. These days at least the patching is sup…

My favorite 'thing' for historical windows was that accessing "C:\con\con" was an instant BSOD (Even over file sharing, or even over an image URL pointing to "file://C:/con/con")

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#97

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

aesegiopiuaer wrote: post #40
H8crilA wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Win95 could be crashed or even rooted just by pinging it the right way? We really have come a long way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_of_death I also remember SMB vulnerabilities that stayed unpatched for years on some machines. That was already when Metasploit existed, so you could inject VNC into most Windows hosts on local network with just a few commands. These days at least the patching is sup…

I remember when CdC released Back Orifice to remote control Windows machines, like ejecting CDROM and such [1]. We really did come a long way, where 0-days go for 20 million dollars. [2]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_Orifice 2: https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/27/russian-zero-day-seller-of...

I may or may not have known someone who wrote a shell script with the linux BO client to reset Windows machines' home pages to a porn site that paid a dollar for every unique clickthrough in IP ranges that were in specific foreign countries.

This person might have earned several hundred dollars each month for several months afterward. But opening their cdrom tray could have been fun too. He probably wishes he had thought of that.

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#98

Post by queuebert »

red_admiral wrote: post #27
fulafel wrote: post #8

"The fix is obvious" indeed.

My math professor used to say there are two kinds of problems: easy ones, and ones you don't understand yet.

Unsurprisingly the mathematician ignores real world problems: problems we understand but can't be bothered to solve (e.g. hunger, poverty, climate, etc.).

Re: Why does trying to break into the NT 3.1 kernel reboot my 486DX4 machine?

#100

Post by chasd00 »

H8crilA wrote: post #19
tzahifadida wrote: post #5

I build a port check way back to determine if services are up. It crashed half the company by simply opening a few tcp ports to the machines. Ridiculous days :)

Remember when Win95 could be crashed or even rooted just by pinging it the right way? We really have come a long way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_of_death I also remember SMB vulnerabilities that stayed unpatched for years on some machines. That was already when Metasploit existed, so you could inject VNC into most Windows hosts on local network with just a few commands. These days at least the patching is sup…

> Remember when Win95 could be crashed or even rooted just by pinging it the right way?

"death on flaxen wings"

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