Theo's Basement Computer Paradise

Computers: one isn't enough!



These are the machines that I have -- not neccessarily own! Normally there's other machines canabalized all over the place. Like the pile of dead 3/60's sitting in the corner to my left. Oh, and the pile of dead (or too small) SCSI drives lying behind me....

In general I do not buy computer hardware. Much of what I collect is either discarded (but usable) junk or is given/loaned to me so that I can do what I like to do: port OpenBSD!

Sun SS2, 28MB, 3.5GB, 2 monitors. SunOS.
Lots of people have these. I added a Magma 4SP serial card, which I'm pretty happy with (except for some bizzare interaction with my modems, which I've finally confirmed to be a bug in Magma's device driver...)

P5/133 PCI 64MB, 17GB:
OpenBSD/i386. 2 Adaptec 2940 PCI SCSI controllers, DEC-chip ethernet, and nothing else really worthwhile talking about. This thing is really fast.

P5/120 PCI 32MB, 2GB:
OpenBSD/i386. Adaptec 2940 PCI SCSI controller, DEC-chip ethernet, ATAPI CDROM, and nothing else really worthwhile talking about. My main test machine.

486/66 EISA, 32MB, 1GB:
OpenBSD/i386. Buslogic 747 EISA SCSI controller, 3C579 EISA ethernet, 3c509 ethernet, and HP CD-R CD writer. Nothing else really worthwhile talking about.

NEC Versa2000 laptop, 16MB, 500MB:
OpenBSD/i386 and a 3C589 ethernet card. I took this down to Mexico with some cave mapping software -- that was pretty awesome. People would come out of the cave with data, and it would be entered into the computer for "spinning and viewing" when they got done with their shower...

Sun 4/400. 64MB, 2GB, SunOS.
Though it is a loud beast, I believe I can make it fit in..

The following machines were heavily involved in the OpenBSD/sparc port:

  • Sun IPC, 12MB, 600MB. OpenBSD/sparc. Actually, this is the first OpenBSD/sparc machine that ever existed! I slaved for weeks -- what a blast! The machine was donated by a friendly person in California.
  • Sun 4/300, 8M, diskless. OpenBSD/sparc. This sits in a monster Sun4/260 chassis -- rooooaaaar. It has 6 fans. The cpu board was donated by a friend in Australia -- as a result I integrated Chuck Cranor's Sun4 work (which was more involved because I ensured that the same kernel would work on sun4 and sun4c machines).

    Sun SS5, 16MB, 500MB. SunOS:
    At the moment this machine does very little. That is very sad. Please don't remind me of it's existance.

    Acer PICA 61, 150MHz R4400, 16MB, 1GB, OpenBSD/pica:
    This is an outdated machine that Acer no longer makes. I find that quite funny because it is a very fast machine (advertised as the fastest machine capable of running NT, mostly because the alpha deals so badly with mis-aligned longs..) A friend has done a port to it, and i've been helping with a few drivers. Don't bother calling Acer trying to buy one -- they won't know what you are talking about. I think they've sold the division...

    DEC Alpha AXPpci33, 166Hz 21066, 32MB, 1GB, OpenBSD/alpha:
    Yes, I have an alpha too.

    AMD NET29K board, 16MB:
    This is a tiny prototype board produced by AMD. Measuring about 3"x3" it contains a 16MHz AMD29240 cpu, MACE ethernet chip, Zilog 8530 serial (YUCK), a tiny (serial!) EEPROM, FLASH RAM capability, and a single 72pin SIMM socket. Eventually I plan to have OpenBSD running on it. The AMD29K processors are really quite elegant, having:

  • a variable-sized register window scheme, implemented mostly in userland!
  • a mmu implemented as a software loaded tlb. the tlb handler runs with the mmu turned off!
  • physically-tagged code cache, but virtually tagged data cache
  • single cycle integer multiply

    The following machines all sit in the same VME cardcage.. well, they used to. now i've got a few more cages. This is what I did for my work. Or check Motorola's documentation. I have just finished porting OpenBSD to them. I want to thank Dale Rahn for his help. The port has COMPAT_SUNOS support so these machines can run SunOS sun3 binaries. That amuses me, because Sun never made a sun3 anywhere near as fast.

  • Motorola MVME167, 68040@25MHz, 32MB, 512MB. OpenBSD/mvme68k.
  • Motorola MVME162, 68040@25MHz, 16MB, 1G. OpenBSD/mvme68k.
  • Motorola MVME147, 68030@16MHz, 4MB, diskless. OpenBSD/mvme68k.

    MVME187, 50MHz M88100, 32MB, 500MB:
    The code written for the MVME167 (as described above) is very applicable towards a OpenBSD/mvme88k port. The MACH project ran on a Luna 88k board, and so provides many of the tricker pieces. A friend in the USA has gotten this partially working. The 88K series processors are also very cool!

    VI Computer, 66MHz MPC601, 32MB, 1GB:

    Digital, 166MHz APXPCI board, 0, 0:

    Willowglen R3081 embedded board:
    My next contract involves porting OpenBSD to this. The R3081 is a very cheap R3000 embedded chip made by IDT. This board contains Sonic ethernet, and NCR 53c94 scsi, 16MB of flash, 32MB of ram, and 4 16550 serial ports. It's amazing how cheap a board like this can be manufactured for.