James' current computer setup

As a self-confessed 'geek', it is perhaps not that surprising that I have a few odd computers; as a way of keeping track of exactly what I have, I wrote down this list, and have now decided to put it up here online for public amusment (or, well, awe ;-)):

As a side note, my computers are named after the flavours of quarks (if they're connected to a network), as it was a naming scheme that amused my 12-year-old mind. When I can be bothered (and can afford) to set up a real domain, as opposed to using someone else's DNS and HTTP server, I'll keep them under the *.quark.jdforrester.org. domain. However, I've almost run out of namespace now, however, so I have renamed the server-like boxes to names about their tasks, which has freed-up the options again; nonetheless, this is a short-term option, as my collection of computers will no-doubt grow further, and so I will need to transition from the current naming-system to another, or, at least, find another for subsequent machines. Suggestions on a postcard, please...

Servers

My collection of servers is ... ecletic. I suppose I'm learning how to administer an arcanly complex heterogenous server system, though ;-)

Quark

This box is a Slot-A-type AMD Athlon (that is, a K7-2) running at 700MHz, running in an Asus K7M motherboard, with two 128MiB and a 256MiB SDRAM sticks, two IBM 75GXP 7200rpm 75GB IDE drives, an IBM 120GXP 7200rpm 120GB IDEGB IDE drive, and a Creative 52x IDE CD-ROM drive, as well as a D-link DFE-530TX NIC, all sitting in a midi-tower case with a 300W power supply that barely manages to keep up with demand. Except for fans, however that's it - no sound card, no video, no mouse or keyboard, and certainly no monitor. This machine runs Windows XP (yes, I know), primarly because I haven't gotten around to installing Debian yet.

This is my main server box, acting primarily as a file server (though not, obviously, for user accounts, as Solaris, Windows, Mac OS X and so on each have a different idea about what such a thing entails, and, secondly, as my FTP server and development HTTP box.

Fire

This is a fan-less Intel Pentium I 166MHz box in some Gateway-badged Intel-chipset-based motherboard, with a sprinkling of SDRAM (a 32MiB stick, I think), an Qantuum 3GB IDE drive, a couple of D-link DFE-530TX NICs, and a D-link DSL-100D internal ADSL PCI modem, all running off a lightweight (200W?) PSU and sitting in an old desktop box from Gateway and running IPCop (version 1.2.0 currently).

This, as you might have guessed both from the name of the box and the specialised operating system that runs on it, is my firewall, both for my ADSL conection to the Internet and the wireless network access point, and also acts as a VPN server (though I rarely use this) and a traffic shaper.

Mail

This is a Sun SparcStation 5 with a 75MHz UltraSPARC II chip, 64MiB of RAM, a 100baseT NIC, and two 2.1GB SCSI hard discs, and a Sun-badged 13W3-interfacing Sony Flatron 20" CRT, running Solaris (version 9 as of right now).

This is my mail (IMAP) server; not really that much to say beyond that.

Airport

This is an Apple AirPort base station, connected directly to Fire via a cross-over cable.

I'm pretty sure you can guess what this does :-).

Workstations and their ilk

What to say? I have too many machines, I know... In my defence, I don't really use most of them that much...

Bottom

This is a Pentium II 450MHz Gateway system that's been left pretty-much intact - 10GB IDE IBM disc, 128MiB of SDRAM, an nVidia TNT Ultra, a Gateway 17" CRT - but with an NIC added. I think the IDE controller has partially shorted, however. I believe it has Windows 2000 installed. Maybe.

I really don't use this machine that much - last time was an impromptu LAN party at my house 2 years ago (in which I managed to field three Windows boxes capable at least to some extent to run Unreal Tournament).

Down

This is a dual AMD Athlon MP machine, based on a Tyan Thunder K7 dual processor motherboard with dual NICs and dual SCSI, with two 1.2GHz AMD AthlonMP K7-4 chips, four Crucial 256MiB registered ECC DDR SDRAM DIMM sticks, a Maxtor 60GB IDE disc, an IBM 18GB SCSI disc, an old HP SCSI 2/4GB tape drive, a Pioneer slot-loading SCSI DVD-ROM drive, a Plextor 12x SCSI CD-RW, another Plextor CD-RW, though this time 40x and IDE based, a Creative Live! Platinum system with associated drive-bay-located controll point feeding into a set of Videologic Digitheatre DTS surround speakers, and a Creative-manufacture nVidia GeForce 460MX card which feeds into an Iiyama 19" TFT LCD.

As you might imagine, this is my main workstation; I use for everything - IMing, email, otherwise online talking, browsing, code development and otherwise work, listening to my extensive music collection, watching my DVDs, and the odd bit of gaming (Unreal Tournament is still fun for a few minutes' relaxation after all these years).

Strange

This is an Apple iBook 800MHz with a 14.4" screen, 640MiB of SO-DIMM sticks, a 40GB disc, DVD-ROM/CD-RW and AirPort card, and running Mac OS X (10.2.5 as of writing).

I use this for code development, web-browsing, and listening to music whilst at home but not in my bedroom (so, probabaly in the kitchen with others, or watching films together, as well as note-taking in lectures and general work and play whilst on the move.

Charm

This is a pretty-much vanilla 206MHz StrongARM-based Acorn RiscPC, with two 'slices', an AMD 5x86-clone 133MHz co-processor, 32MiB of memory, 2MiB of VRAM, a SCSI-2 podule, a 1GB IDE drive, and a 1GB IBM SCSI drive, and runs Risc OS 3.71.

Sadly, this computer is effectively 'dead', as it has been a while since I've used this machine, as it has no Ethernet podule (yet), so I have no real reason to use it; OTOH, Zap is, by far, the best editor in the world, ever. Pity ZapRedraw (the main OS-interfacing, screen-drawing code) is ~50KiB of hand-optimised ARM ASM.

Future plans (read: speculative computers - id est, ones I don't own... yet)

As said before, I would really like to have my own machine sitting in a CoLo somewhere, to be jdforrester.org. - maybe a Sun Netra X1?. Further, I'll probably eventually split the functionality provided currently by Quark up into two seperate boxes, one for FTP/HTTP serving, and one for fileserving, and move the domain controll issues, which aren't really handled at all right now, upstream to ns.jdforrester.org., whatever box ends up carrying out that function. Also, I'd love one of those mini-IPX boxes - very dinky. Seems I'll have to save up some money, then...