======Part 1======
=====Entries=====
====August 29, 2012====
Today I am beginning my Gentoo build. In this I hope to learn more about file systems, kernels, and the bells and whistles of what is a linux operating system.
As I begin my journey, I am immediately formatting the drive for installation. Here I learn that ext2 is the oldest format for a linux -- I will finish this later.
Let's talk about that SPARCstation IPX on that desk back there. I wanna put some debian on that. Before this, let's learn more about this machine.
SPARCstation IPX -
*Has SCSI port - I need to do some research on this
*CPU clocks at 40 Mhz (cool!)
*holds a 50 pin hard drive -- this is a lie, it's a 68 pin
*no IDE/ATAPI support (don't need it)
and as for the network support, well, wikipedia quoting time "The SPARCstation IPC comes with an on-board AMD Lance ethernet chipset providing 10Base2 and 10Base5 via an AUI transceiver." --this is all fine and dandy but i have no idea the capabilities of 10Base2 nor 10Base5
also the SPARCstation will not boot, due to the nvram being dead. Needs some battery power -- tomorrow we will fix this hopefully
So let's break this down even more
SCSI - Small Computer System Interface; is a standard for connecting and transferring data between computers and devices. It connects not only hard drives, but stuff like CD + floppy drives, printers, scaners, ect.
Big things about scsi
*Up to 8 or 16 devices can be attached to a single bus -- hardcore
*communication takes place between an initiator and a target
*has to be terminated with a resistor I think
*The "small" part in SCSI is historical; since the mid-1990s, SCSI has been available on even the largest of computer systems
nowadays it almost does not exist.
NVRAM - Non-volatile random-access memory; is a RAM (Random Access Memory) that keeps it's information after it's turned off -- WHAAAAAAAT (mind blown)
*The best-known form of NVRAM memory today is flash memory.
*the nvram allows certain rom's to be written electrically by the end-user -- meaning you can edit the bios electrically (PROM)
*runs off of a battery -- since this is a chip, i am going to need help sawing and plugging some batteries into it to make it work again
* IPC holds system information such as MAC address and serial number in NVRAM
10base5 - call me ethernet, thick ethernet.
*used cable similar to RG-8/U coaxial cable but with extra braided shielding -- That's pretty thick yo
*fire resistant cable -- i'd like to test this out someday
*10base5 - 10 refers to 10mib connection, base= baseband (instead of broadband), and 5 stands for the maximum segment length of 500 meters
*obsolete
====August 30ist, 2012====
Watching Eagles are turning people into horses the movie. Haven't seen it yet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1-Oep9uNwM
I need to go back to the whole formatting thing on gentoo.
*ext2 doesn't have metadata journaling
*ext3 does have metadata journaling, but has the same limitations on file transfer as ext2 did
*ext4 has removed such limitations
i decided to go with 3 partitions: one swap, one boot partition, one full size love boat.
--totally just came into wedge's discrete class in a full gumby costume (hah)
not going to touch the nvram today without a trained perfessional overlooking me
let's look at the sun architecture later
====August 31, 2012====
f**k it we are hitting this nvram today
basically we are smacking the batteries together and then to the nvram using copper wire. jacob's soughing right now.
okay it took 3 hours to solder that. Jake and I took turns smacking the batteries with solder and trying to get the wires to stick. We eventually figured a method of dripping the solder on the wire whilst on the battery, then folding the solder over creating a contact strong enough that worked. After finally getting it to stick (and about 6 inches of solder), we got it together. I wrapped it with electrical tape and smacked it into the ipx.
Boom. Success.
The best part was that it worked the first time (unlike the solder).
---
Okay the soldering was done, now comes the part of configuring the hostid and the mac address. After much research, Jake discovered several ways to export a value into the nvram to get it to change values: mkpl. After configuring the hostid (and much arm flailing) wedge came over and typed "set-defaults" and it booted the linux.
Incase I forgot to add this: we are running debian woody version 3.0 off of a disc i burnt from the interwebz in a caddy into a cdrom drive specifically for sun4c computers.
So jake, matt, and I continued our path to installing the OS. After much box checking, we came across the formatting for the partition table. It was very similar to fdisk and I decided to give a stab at it.
I set it up exactly like the gentoo build I did earlier
*boot sda1
*swap sda2
*fs sda3
apparently sun4c didn't like that. THEY USE SOMETHING SO MUCH BETTER
matt told us (as we were snacking) that these types of computers (i'm not sure what domain to put them into) use a special formatting table.
in the end it looked like this
*boot sda1
*swap sda2
*everything in the entire world + boot + swap sda3
Yeah, sda1 and sda2 are contained within sda3
needless to say i was scared. my jimmies were rustled pretty well.
Yet I was un-rustled when he explained that this is called a slice style formatting table. Meaning the computer sees the whole drive before it sees the boot partition and the swap. That makes sense (i guess)
boom, yada yada yada, no hangups, no hangups
woody was installed.
====September 1nth, 2012====
VI IS THE BEST TEXT EDITOR OF ALL TIME JUST LOOK AT THIS CHART AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
{{http://i.imgur.com/PKsnh.gif?700x550}}
searching for some more support for older sparc machines i came across some wonderful l.e.d. hacks that may resurface later
I can't even find any information on the sun architecture and how it differs between i386 and amd64. :((((((
fixed one of my co worker's computer. His dell xps 600 kept seeing his phone as a camera. Went on device manager and updated the drivers. Fixed. It was also not playing dvd's so i spent a lot of time trying other things but it ended up being a corrupted codic for media player. Fixed.
I'm going to read this entire C book beginning to end.
Chapter 1! ( I can't read with music playing so it's taking me a while before I finally turned it off)
The Basics this book will cover
*variables and constants
*arithmetic
*control flow
*functions
*the rudiments of input and output
1.1 hello world (resisting the urge to check facebook)
*/ This code is part of thakes3's opus /*
#include
int main()
{
printf("YO WORLD WAZAP");
return 0;
}
compiled with gcc leik dis:
lab46~: gcc -o yoworld.o yoworld.c
bam works.
moving on:
==1.2==
This program converts Farenheit temps to Celsius.
I CANNOT GET THIS OUT OF MY HEAD : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJSFlMCTXE8 --horse takes it to the limit.
I want to try that game later, never played it.
back the the 'gram
/* this code is for thakes3's opus */
#include
int main()
{
float fahr, celsius;
int lower, upper, step;
lower = 0; // lower limit of temperature table
upper =300; // upper limit
step = 20; // step size
fahr = lower;
while (fahr <= upper) {
celsius = (5.0/9.0) * (fahr - 32);
printf("%3.0f %6.1f\n", fahr, celsius);
fahr = fahr + step;
}
return 0;
}
tested and works. this one uses a while loop to do the math and print out each value before returning to do another. genius stuff people
==1.3==
I am on page 12 and I am retiring this for the night as I want to read into another possible project; turning my old android phone into a machine i can ssh into
====September 6, 2012====
Yeah I forgot about the opus for the past few days but I'm sticking too it. I need to do this.
Today Jake and I installed FreePBX on a computer and played with it a little but we made no headway because we couldn't get the gui running and asterisks wasn't popping up. Will look into later.
Sat in data structures, learned about the sizeof thingy within C. It's pretty neat because it'll tell you the amount you can store within a variable. The challenge was to find the sizeof the largest container within C. It was simple, yet complex. I'm anxious to see how that will tie in with the structures.
Update on the SPARC machine; this POS doesn't like our solder job. Pressly said he would fix it (he is so nice to us). So all the important information is cleared and we need to fix it :(.
====September 6th 2012====
====September 7th 2012====
So today we got back to the sparc, sync'd the time to juicebox (our time server).
For some strange reason it will not sync if it is years apon years off, so we had to edit the time to get it close enough.
After this we got back the OS. From there we decided to get a better package manager other than tvm. fvwm was a perfect fit as it was light enough for the processor, yet strong enough to handle certain applications.
cover : au file stream, /dev/audio , firefox (phenox + firebird)
====September 10th 2012====
Doing a build of openbsd right now.
Installed via CD. the installation was actually pretty easy. from the very base install it has fvwm already. I used pkg_add to install a package manager called "pkg_mgr". I've been using the hell out of it because openbsd has literally nothing on it from start. I can't get a decent version of vim on this thing and i suck at nano so therefore nano is out of the question.
something to note: openbsd uses the ksh console instead of bash, and i don't know why. Pretty weird stuff.
I would like to get my double head working again but it looks like i need to find a driver for the graphics card and i can barely find vim. lxfe installed ok though and works like a champ. Also got firefox in here which is great. Flash is going to be tough but there may be a version out for it. More research to find out.
SUBWAY SUBS ARE 5.40$ WITH TAX GO GET ONE AND EAT IT RIGHT NOW
Also openbsd doesn't come with lspci, you need to get the package ;_;.
Links for Later
* http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20080506180146
* http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=radeon
* http://www.openbsdsupport.org/gnome-GDM.html
* http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=16823
====September 13th 2012====
Let me tell you why openbox sucks compaired to Xfce4.
* Openbox looks like a 12 year old drew it
* terminator is a shitty python script that sucks D
* Xfce is stable AF, openbox always had some quirky problem
ok
====September 14th 2012====
I have began to switch everything I use in terminal to something different in order to become more worldly. Just because one person likes nano doesn't make it the one true path.
Tmux baby
http://www.jeffstory.org/wordpress/?p=132
Emacs, the dark side of text editing. Good i like evil.
http://sip.clarku.edu/tutorials/intro_emacs.html
good stuff people.
====September 17th 2012====
Anelio's sub: Chicken wing w/ blue cheese
* Blue cheese per bread ratio 3:1
* Amount of chicken strips: 3
* overall rating: 2/10
* recommend? never
Haas and I have been working on a script lately that will pull the homework from haas's web server, grep for the lines that contain the homework, and create a update system for lab46 that will alarm people when there is homework due in the class the day of.
It's been going OK so far, unfortunately I need to be hand-held throughout a lot of it. Hopefully someday I can write my own script that will work and I will understand. But the regex on this is killing me.
Working on some keywords that will hopefully be done tomorrow for class.
Also my barb is almost level 50 in d3. Didn't know if anyone wanted to know that. BUT I DIGRESS
I am almost more efficient with emacs than I am with vim. Mostly because i keep looking up keystrokes for it out of sheer boredom.
Tmux is still wonderful: when you split your screens it doesn't go away until you tell it too. No need for a script in the first place it's already been there and back. Take that GNU!
=====Keywords=====
{{page>datapart1&nofooter}}
{{page>datacommpart1&nofooter}}
{{page>hpc1part1&nofooter}}
=====Experiment 1=====
====Question====
Can non volatile ram be revived by Frankenstein-ing it with two triple A batteries and solder?
====Resources====
http://www.obsolyte.com/sun_ipx/
http://www.squirrel.com/sun-nvram-hostid.faq.html
https://www.kill-9.it/blog/index.php/tag/hardware/
====Hypothesis====
Jake and I believe that by shaving the nvram for connectors, soldering the batteries to wire, and the wire to the nvram, that we can revive the dead chip within the sparc ipx and therefore allow it to run.
====Data====
We opened the case, soldered the batteries to wire, soldered the wire to the battery, stuck the chip in, and booted it right up
====Analysis====
Based on the data collected:
* Was your hypothesis correct? yes
* Was your hypothesis not applicable? no
* Is there more going on than you originally thought? (shortcomings in hypothesis) soldering sucks
* What shortcomings might there be in your experiment? definitely should have used flux
* What shortcomings might there be in your data? ^
====Conclusions====
GORILLA MUNCH IS DELICIOUS AND I LIKE TURTLES