Picked up a Proliant SE1101 server this weekend that I plan to use for my home server to replace an aging eMachine that has held up for about 7 years. The server is probably almost the same age but has much more functionality (dual, quad-core Xeon processors, 16 GB RAM, etc). Unit was $50 on Craigslist and is a little beat up on the outside, with 2 drive trays missing and the 1 remaining drive being questionable, but interior is very clean. Will probably get 2 additional drive trays and put several 2 TB drives in the system in a mirrored RAID configuration (unfortunately, the internal RAID is 0,1 only). Also have a Dell PowerEdge R805 coming that will hopefully become a NextCloud server on CentOS 7.

While I’m more comfortable with Xubuntu distro, I believe I’m going to migrate my existing home server from Win 2003 PDC to CentOS and utilize a SAMBA configuration instead. I still need my home users to be able to login on Win 7 through Win 10 (or whatever they want), but I’m tired of maintaining a Windows Server. Then again, I might just keep it on Windows just for practice. Either way, will probably be running on ESXi bare metal with virtual machines. Much easier to maintain.

The system is currently dispersed throughout the house. However, with recent kid departures, we are rearranging and I will be consolidating equipment into one room, with more powerful and reliable Cisco equipment taking the place of other cheap equipment.

Finally bought a LaserDisc player this weekend along with the first 3 Star Wars (Wide Screen). Also picked up a few LDs from Goodwill in Austin through their online sales. So far, the quality might not be as good as other modern media but it’s a joy to watch movies with the artifacts and imperfections that you often see in analog vs. digital. Unfortunately, the player didn’t have an original Pioneer remote control, but I found a cheap GE 8 unit universal remote that includes codes for several LD player brands, including Pioneer, that seems to work (code #0222 if it’s a CL3 variant). It won’t turn the player on, but other functionality is good enough to play, pause, and stop, which is really all I care about at this point. It can also do some chapter searching but I haven’t played with it much more.

Currently watching Vertigo. I haven’t seen it before, so it’s actually pretty nice watching it on a clean media. Very little deterioration of the disc considering it’s over 30 years old.

I use Xubuntu rather than the regular Ubuntu distribution as I like the XFCE system better than most of the others associated with the various distros. I thought I might compile a list of programs that I use on a regular basis, along with the similar Windows application as a point of reference. Note, most programs can be installed by running

sudo apt-get install program-name

After typing several characters of the program name, you can hit the TAB key a couple of times to get auto complete or a list of installables that begin with the characters you’ve entered so far…

• xubuntu-restricted-addons: easy installation for a number of codecs and useful items that are not installed by default for legal (or other) reasons
• xubuntu-restricted-extras: easy installation of several items such as cabextract (extract Windows CAB files), Microsoft Core Fonts (useful for many reasons), etc
• build-essential: if you plan on building any programs from source, it’s a good idea to install this package as it contains a number of essential utilities
• exfat-utils: if you use any of the newer external drives that include exfat file systems (seem to be taking the place of FAT32), this will install both the utilities and the filesystem driver itself and ease your life
• gparted: this is a partition manager that can handle gpt, mbr, etc., and is a GUI-based interface to parted and many (many) file system utilities
• kicad: this is an electronics development system that includes schematic, board layout, simulation, etc. Probably not needed by many users, but for people like myself, it’s very useful
• librecad: similar to other CAD drawing programs
• hfsutils-tcltk: for those with Mac HFS formatted drives, etc., this GUI and utilities package can provide some useful functionality
• hfsprogs: provides additional HFS functionality [NOTE: for both of these, you might have to turn off journaling via a Mac prior to working with these drives under Linux, depending on what you want to do]
• dia: a diagram program that is similar to Microsoft Visio (but not compatible)
• gramps: family tree management, very detailed so can be challenging for users that are used to the more user-friendly Windows programs
• wine: this is a Windows compatibility system (not an emulator) that allows running some Windows programs perfectly, and many others less than perfectly. I recommend downloading and installing from the homepage, http://winehq.org, rather than from the distro as the distros are often behind on updates. Check out the instructions for the Ubuntu distro, it will walk you through adding a ppa repository and other optional/required steps
• winetricks: this is a package that works with wine to simplify installation of various libraries, runtimes, and general applications
• VirtualBox: Oracle now owns this program, but it is still essentially free; it provides the ability to run many different operating systems via emulation and has good speed and performance. For high-end data centers, other systems are better but VirtualBox is geared towards testing and development installations (in my opinion, not their official statement). I recommend downloading from the homepage, http://virtualbox.org, as the distros tend to lag behind on this one as well.
• joe: a very nice text editor that works well from the command line; vim is great for those that are used to its syntax but I was more familiar with editors similar to joe
• minicom: great terminal program for serial communications, similar to Telix and other DOS-based programs
• openssh-server: if you want to be able to connect to your computer via a remote shell session, as well as using sftp to transfer files. Many users probably don’t need this, but it’s helpful
• remmina: remote desktop access if you need to manage Windows machines through RDP sessions

A few quick notes:

• For serial port access, you should add yourself to the dialout, tty, and uucp groups; I’ve had mixed success depending on the program but adding to all three seems to enable access to the serial ports/serial port converters (/dev/ttySx and /dev/ttyUSBx)
• For VirtualBox, you need to add yourself to the vboxusers group; otherwise, you can’t give control of USB and other devices to VirtualBox
• Note that if you install VirtualBox from a package rather than through the distro, you’ll need to do vboxsetup after some system updates to rebuild the drivers; look for updates that affect the linux version itself

A couple of very nice lots from Louisville this evening. First, a doctor/gentleman that was downsizing and decided to give up his TRS-80 Model III with various peripherals and software. Includes an SPSS (statistical package clone which he swears could solve a t value in no more than 5 minutes or so), along with printer and various software. He was also kind enough to include a trunk of various software and an external floppy drive, in addition to the 2 installed drives. No time yet to power up the system and confirm memory, graphics, etc., but the machine was single owner and purchased for his dissertation.

Another batch of items included (2) TRS CoCo 2’s and a TRS CoCo 3 (unexpectedly). I’ve been looking for a 3 for quite a while so was definitely pleased with all of this hardware. There were 3 Radio Shack tape units, at least 3 or 4 disk drives, and various other hardware and software.

I look forward to unboxing and playing with all of these items and will post more details as they become available.

Looks like the previous methods to install Xubuntu on the C710 do not properly activate the touchpad. The cyapa module name has changed but doesn’t seem to be the main culprit. There appears to be a more significant change in the modules being loaded (specifically, cyapatp, i2c_i801, and chromeos_laptop) that are causing issues. I have tried a number of combinations of blacklist.conf entries and modules entries and have been unable to get the touchpad to load automagically. However, it works as soon as one or more of the above modules are insmod’ed. I hope to eventually figure out what has to be done, although under most cases it doesn’t really matter to me as I have a bluetooth mouse being used most of the time anyway.

Edit: Successful, but not exactly what I expected. The /etc/modules file doesn’t seem to do anything; I haven’t had time to research as this is all I ever used it for in the past. However, use sudo nano /etc/rc.local (or your favorite text editor) and add the following lines just before exit 0.

# C710 modules for trackpad

modprobe i2c-i801

modprobe chromeos_laptop.

Hopefully, this will solve the problem for you; seems to work fine on my system.

I guess one of the curses of getting older is you begin to lose friends. A co-worker passed away recently, great guy with lots of knowledge and experience. Although he was almost 60 years old, he was only 10 years older than I am. As I get older and begin to lose friends (or, at least, those that I work with or know in some context), life becomes more precious. While I won’t patronize you by saying I’ll keep you in my prayers, I will say that my condolences go out to the families of each and that it was a pleasure to know you.

Purchased a MacBook Pro 3,1 (2008) model via a newsgroup recently that was described as a project machine. It had a habit of shutting down or rebooting unexpectedly. Since it had no battery or power adapter, I acquired aftermarket versions of those as well. When the unit arrived, I found that it still contained a 500 GB drive and had the original 2 GB RAM. I also found that, sure enough, the machine would reboot after a few minutes to a couple of hours. In the process of troubleshooting, I found that both SO-DIMMs were exhibiting faults but a fresh 1 GB installed by itself ran for a couple of days without incident. I went ahead and purchased 2x2GB SO-DIMMs.

While waiting for the new RAM to arrive, I had purchased a second 85 Watt power supply (aftermarket) through eBay. Less than 90 minutes after starting to use that power supply, it popped and took out the MacBook as well. The PS was useless and was severely charred inside; the power/USB/audio board in the MacBook smelled of burnt components, too. I ordered a replacement and installed it when it arrived, only to find that the primary flat connector didn’t seat very well on the logic board, requiring jamming a piece of cardboard on top of it to maintain sufficient pressure at all times.

Lessons learned:

• Crappy aftermarket PS can kill your MacBook; glad I only had $100 invested in the Mac
• Green light on cable indicates a complete circuit only to a point; you might still have any number of other problems if the machine won’t boot
• Three flashes on the white LED on the front of the MacBook generally indicates that there is a RAM fault
• If green light on cable won’t come on, check that the flat connector from the power board to the logic board is properly seated
• For some reason, the MacBook won’t run with the keyboard “detached”, although it seems that it should be able to

So far, so good…

I can’t wait for Zeus to smite your dumb ass.

Guess that calls it. Good luck with that.

Just purchased 4 Apple II cards through eBay. Actually, I was only after the IEEE-488 card but also included were a Microsoft Z-80 card as well as a couple of other interface cards. Will worry later about the rest, currently want to see what the 488 card can do in a IIGS.

Also working on purchasing some other Apple II related items and/or emulation items, including an MFM emulator. Not sure if there were ever any MFM hard drive controllers for the Apple II, but thought it might be an interesting bit of kit at some point…

Eventually going after Ian’s Mockingbird-compatible card, have a bare SDisk2 card, and a couple of prototype boards. Now to find some kit to build from all of this stuff… did I mention that I have around 10 printer/parallel port cards? Must be adaptable to some use.