On 6/12/06, Goodwin, Greg P. <GoodwinG@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
8) Exception to the above rule, if the service is run on a RETRO COMPUTER, this is not only more than fine, but encouraged. :) (Someone sets up a telnet BBS for all the racers to access with their retro machines (hint hint!!) on say an early Amiga or Mac as an example. Even Atari 8-bits and Commodores could do this.)
OK, I'll bite.
I have a few Macs that can run NetBSD and a DSL line. If anyone is interested I can setup a system for participants. Lynx and Links would make good web browsers, Pine or mutt a good email client, tin/trn/pine/whatever for local news as a kind of BBS, party or irc for a chat system and anything else I can think of or people request. Since I work from home and need some bandwidth for work IRC and Usenet access off the system would not be allowed. This would mainly be intended for people that either already know Unix or could pick it up on their own. I would not have time to teach lots of people Unix from scratch due to work and other commitments. I could setup a simple menu that would make it easier for people new to Unix.
The available Macs are a IIci and Quadras 650, 700 and 800. I can max the ram on the 650 (132 or 136, I forget what it has built in) and the 800 (136M) but I only have 4M sims for the IIci and 700 (36M or 20M respectively). The IIci and 700 seem more in line with the spirit, but the 650 or 800 would perform better.
I did consider AUX for a moment since that would make a very retro setup. Unfortunately AUX is rather old and too many security problems have been discovered since it's release. This would make for too much time and effort trying to setup, maintain and protect the system.
Let me know what you think. If there is interest I will setup a system this weekend. Keep in mind that since I only have a DSL line I could not host email and the network performance would not be that great. On the up side Gmail (I have lots of invites) and other free email services allow POP3 access which I think works in Pine and I know would work with fetchmail. There are also plenty of telnet clients for old Macs, even for the Plus. There is even an ssh client that works on 68k macs called NiftyTelnet SSH.
If this does not sound appealing might I suggest the public access Unix systems Grex (cyberspace.org) which is free but does not allow outbound internet and SDF (sdf.lonestar.org) which charges a dollar or more depending on access levels. The Deathrow OpenVMS cluster (deathrow.vistech.net) which allows some outbound traffic and has a Vax and Alpha node.
-- Lorance Stinson http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorancestinson/ http://lorance.freeshell.org/
