Mindstab.net

Table of Contents

1. Active / Current
2. Past / Retired
3. History

Active / Current

Enki Description: Netbook OS: Ubuntu Linux CPU: Intel Atom N450 @ 1.66 GHz Harddrive: 250 GB RAM: 1 GB Video: Intel N10 Model: Gateway LT21 Notes: Mobile development. Often paired with a 22″ monitor	Loki Description: Server (mindstab.net) Hardware: Xen VPS with linode.com OS: Gentoo Linux CPU: Dual Core Intel Xeon @ 2.27 GHz Harddrive: 24 GB RAM: 768 MB	Umbriel Description: Laptop OS: Ubuntu Linux CPU: Core2 Due 1.6 GHz Harddrive: 250 GB RAM: 2 GB Video: Intel X3100 WiFi: Intel Model: Acer Extensa
Bion Description: Nettop: Media-center, Secondary DNS OS: Ubuntu CPU: Intel Atom 1.6 GHz Harddrive: 250 GB RAM: 1 GB	Janus Description: Firewall, Secondary DNS OS: OpenBSB CPU: Pentium 166 MHz Harddrive: 8.5 GB RAM: 128 MB

Retired / Past

Inferno Description: Desktop OS: Gentoo Linux CPU: Athlon 1800+ (1500 MHz) Harddrive: 425 GB (LVM2) + 500GB USB RAM: 1 GB Video: Geforce 6200 256MB Sound: Sound Blast Live! 5.1	Kvasir Description: Server (mindstab.net) OS: Gentoo Linux CPU: Pentium-4 2.8 GHz Harddrive: 120 GB (RAID 1) RAM: 512 MB Model: SuperMicro 1U RackMount	Nika Description: Laptop OS: Ubuntu Linux CPU: Celeron-M 1500 MHz Harddrive: 40 GB RAM: 768 MB Video: i915 WiFi: Atheros Model: Toshiba Satellite M40x
Crash Description: Spare 1 OS: Gentoo Linux CPU: Pentium-3 450 MHz Harddrive: 15 GB RAM: 384 MB Video: TNT2	IPaq Description: Ultra Portable Programming Tool OS: Familiar Linux and Debian Linux chroot CPU: 624 MHz Xscale (ARM) Harddrive: 1 GB SD Card + 512 MB CF Card RAM: 64 MB RAM + 128 MB ROM Model: IPaq hx4700	Bast Description: PPC arch TestBox OS: Gentoo Linux CPU: PPC G3 350MHz Harddrive: 20 GB RAM: 256 MB Video: ATi IRage 128 GL
GP2X Description: Ultra Portable OS: Debian Linux CPU: ARM 920T 200 MHz Harddrive: 1 GB Flash SD card RAM: 64 MB Model: GP2X First Edition	Snow Description: Spare 2 OS: Ubuntu Linux CPU: Pentium-3 600 MHz Harddrive: 15 GB RAM: 256 MB Video: ATi Rage 128	Frost Description: Spare Firewall OS: OpenBSD CPU: Pentium 133 MHz Harddrive: 4 GB RAM: 128 MB
Maxine Description: Laptop OS: OpenBSD CPU: Pentium 150 MHz Harddrive: 4 GB RAM: 80 MB Model: HP Omnibook	Holly Description: Server / Firewall OS: FreeBSD CPU: Cyrix 486 133 MHz Harddrive: 2 GB ? RAM: 128 MB ?

History

Early
First there was a black and yellow 286 with DOS. Then a CGA or EGA 286. I remember a computer that had to be upgraded from 2 megs of ram to 8 for a birthday so I could play Warcraft. I remember dos, windows 3.1, then windows 95.

1999
In 1999 my family bought Crash which was the new family computer. They kept the windows 95 box around too for a while but it was old and rickety.

2001
By the summer of 2001 it was dead but I was also given a friend’s dead computer and between the two of them I made Holly, the first computer that was ever wholly mine, and my first Linux/BSD box. I tried Mandrake Linux 8.0on the poor machine and it ran it, but painfully slow. I soon moved on to console only FreeBSD. It soon became the first host of mindstab.net.

2002
In the spring of 2002 a friend gave me Frost made from spare parts from his computer class at his school where he was an admin. It became my first real Linux desktop, using Debian Linux and the blackbox window manager. In the summer of 2002 I bought Inferno to become my main desktop computer. Frost was then retired to the position of mindstab.net server which lasted from fall 2002 – winter 2004. Holly then became a testbed of sorts. In the fall of 2002 I bought Maxine, a laptop, for school. The only thing that would reliably install and run on her was OpenBSD. It also had better PCMCIA WiFi network card support than some Linux distros at the time.

2003
2003 only saw some upgrades to Inferno. A new graphics card, new ram, a second harddrive, a DVD drive, a CDRW drive, and by the end of the year a new power supply because the original one burnt out.

2004
In January 2004 I bought Janus from a friend at a networking company to be used as an OS testbed. Holly was harvested for spare parts and what was left was retired. I was able to cram Windows 2000, BeOS PE5, RedHat Linux, Debian Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD onto Janus‘s cramped 10GB of space. In the summer of 2004 I bought a rackmount server, Kvasir. During the winter of 2004 my ISP started port blocking, killing mindstab.net temporarily as it was hosted from home. Frost became a firewall.

2005
In the spring Kvasir took over the job of mindstab.net host at a colocation facility. In the spring of 2005 Janus was turned into my primary firewall and mindstab.net secondary DNS, and was relegated to a spare backup. The rational for this was that qemu and other emulation software was advanced enough I could move all my OS testing onto Inferno. In the late spring of 2005 Crash was given to me by my family when they upgraded to Snow, a slightly superior windows XP box that was given to them. I put Ubuntu Linux on Crash and started using it as Folding@home fodder. On July 30, 2005, I bought a new laptop, Nika, and retired the failing Maxine. In the fall I jumped on the early adopter bandwagon and pre-ordered a GP2X and recieved it in December. Also in December 2005 my family finally bought a new computer so I then inherited Snow onto which I also put Ubuntu Linux and used occasionally as Folding@home fodder.

2006
In the spring, I put Gentoo Linux on Crash and ran a short lived Quake3 server. Also, Inferno got a third hard drive and was converted to using LVM2 to combine the hard drives into one massive drive. In August, my financing took a turn for the worse, and I downgraded Kvasir from a costly collocation facility to a business line at home. In October Inferno got another ram upgrade. On November 14, 2006, I bought Bast, a second hand Mac G3 to be my alternate arch test box (big endian!). In December, I finally renewed my interest in my GP2X and installed a chrootable Debian environment on it.

2007
In the spring I finally found Ubuntu to have mostly everything I needed and be stable and useful so I replace my Gentoo install with it on Nika. This was the first time I started using Ubuntu on a main computer of mine. In June I donated Snow with a fresh XUbuntu install to a friend who did not have a computer. Over the summer, Frost finally got tossed, in part due to space requirements and in part do to incredible old age and not so usefulness. In August I picked up an IPaq hx4700 (PDA) and installed Familiar Linux on it. It became my ultra portable programming tool with it’s foldable keyboard and a Debian chroot with all the programming languages and text editors I need.

In September Nika died, apparently from an electrical system failure. However in December I bought a boxing day replacement, Umbriel on deep discount.

2009
In the summer mindstab.net’s modem died and it’s ISP decided it didn’t want to replace it for a couple of weeks, so ISPs were switched. Then in the winter it was show that the new ISP’s cable at mindstab.net’s location stopped working at night when the tempurate dropped below about -3c.

2010
On January 7th Kvasir‘s fan died and the server screamed to death. That coupled with the recent massive ISP problems of 2009, it was decided that hosting at home was a dead solution and so mindstab.net moved into the cloud at linode.com and Loki was provisioned as the new mindstab.net server.

In the spring I purchased a netbook, Enki, to be my new ultra portable and take with me traveling to China and Korea. It served me very well and took up little space. When I got back I paired it with a 22″ LCD to get “real work” done.

Over the spring Bast and Crash were retired in a bout of spring cleaning. And in the end of summer Inferno was considered dead and replaced by Umbriel strapped to my desk with a USB mouse and keyboard and a 19″ LCD.