clabretro

Patreon Vid: "Fixing" the Cisco 2525

Patreon Vid: Unboxing Some Stuff and Future Plans

Unboxing some recent pickups, including a DECserver 300, and talking about future video plans.

Also Khloe the cat.

https://youtu.be/1cQG6hwilvQ

Early Vid: Homelab T3

Finally wrapped up the first video of 2026, setting up a real T3 connection down here in the homelab and doing a medium-to-deep-dive of T-Carrier and why it exists in a historical context.

A huge thanks to everyone who left feedback on the early release of the T-Carrier history portion; I tried to incorporate changes but to be honest I'm tired and ready to move on to other videos, so I apologize if I didn't loop in the feedback as well as I could. I'll definitely use it going forward f...

T-Carrier Preview

Here's a preview of the progress I've made so far on a video about T-Carrier (i.e. T1 and T3). I'll be covering T3 hands on in the video eventually but I've had a ton of travel (and more to come) so progress has been slow.

So far the history of T-Carrier and part of a technical explanation of T1 is done, let me know if I've made any mistakes and I'll try to re-shoot those for the final video!

Patreon Vid: clabretro state of the union

Talking about how 2025 went for the channel, future plans, Khloe the cat, and some general rambling.

Thanks again for making 2025 an awesome year for the channel, I can't stress enough that it wouldn't be possible at all without each and every one of you. We'll be full steam ahead rolling into 2026! Hoping I'll have another video out in 2025, but unfortunately can't make any promises with the holidays and bunch of travel coming up.

Early Vid: DEC VT520 Terminal

Perhaps the earliest "early release" I've ever made. Checking out a DEC VT520 terminal from the early 1990s. We'll fix a jammed power button, test it out with an RS/6000, and try out multiple terminal sessions after making an MMJ cable adapter to hook up a Cisco 2600 router. We'll also get a bonus interview with my mom, she worked for DEC in the 1980s.

Video will go live on the channel later in the week!

Patreon Vid: Merlin Feature Package Teardown

One of my Merlin Feature Package 2 cartridges was already half broken, let's tear it apart.

Early Vid: Merlin Expansion Cartridges

Taking a look at some Merlin Classic expansion cartridges of all three types (Types I, II, and III). We'll look at Feature Package carts one and two, a Music on Hold cartridge, and a power failure line card.

Video goes live Friday!

Patreon Vid: Unboxing Some Tape Drive Stuff

Unboxing some tape drive (and other) stuff. It's tape season.

Early Vid: Fluke Enterprise LANMeter

Checking out a Fluke LANMeter from 1998.

Video goes live on Wednesday!

Patreon Vid: Storage Unit VLOG

Getting some stuff over to the new storage unit! I'll eventually get shelves in there, I want them deep enough to slide in the servers vertically.

Early Vid: Net Booting an RS/6000 from 1996 with NIM

Installing AIX 5.1 over the network onto an RS/6000 43p via a Network Installation Management (NIM) server.

Video probably goes live on the channel Wednesday!

Early Vid: Merlin Phone Haul

Unboxing a massive haul of AT&T Merlin phones , setting them up, and playing around.

Video should go live tomorrow night!

Early Vid: Setting up Sun Rays

Finally getting the Sun Rays incorporated into the retro rack. A Sun Fire V240 is hosting the Sun Ray Server Software required for these thin clients to run. We'll do plenty of retro rack console server shenanigans, experiment with the "dual head" (aka dual monitor) capabilities of a Sun Ray 2FS, and finally do a start-to-finish new user setup with some third party Smartcards.

Early Vid: Merlin and Cisco IP Phones

Getting the Merlins and Cisco IP phones talking to each other! Plenty of retro rack infrastructure work as well.

Video should go live Thursday or Friday! (EDIT: probably Wednesday lol)

Patreon Vid: SPARCstation IPX Teaser

Finally taking a look at the SPARCstation IPX to see what kind of shape it's in. Good news: it is in kind of okay shape.

Patreon Vid: PDU Updates

Update on progress using an APC AP7911 PDU to remotely control power in the retro rack. Taking a quick look at some recent pickups too!

Early Vid: Enterprise Power Distribution Units

Taking a look at some enterprise PDUs, specifically an ADP AP7830 from 2005. I'll go over the current retro rack power situation, fire up this AP7830 to see if we can interact with it, and prototype a future control panel using an old Liebert System3 panel and some ESP8266 microcontrollers.

Video should go live Thursday or Friday!

Early Vid: IBM POWER6

EDIT: Original upload was missing the last two minutes, latest upload is linked here now (so your original video comments are on the old one).

Taking a look at an IBM POWER6 machine rescued from a dumpster. We'll get this thing powered on and hooked up to an HMC, and also cover the IBM pSeries and iSeries history.

Video goes live Thursday!

Patreon Vid: Messing with a Windows 95 Machine

Trying to get some drivers on a Windows 95 machine. The point was to look at an IBM Model M keyboard clone, but here we are.

Early Video: Token Ring on IBM PS/2

As promised, got back at it this week to finish up the Token Ring IBM PS/2 video. It was definitely the disk format you saw at the end of the draft, I make a lot of progress after that!

Video goes live on Friday!

Draft Video: Token Ring on IBM PS/2

This is an in-progress draft trying to get some IBM PS/2s on a token ring network. I won't be able to finish this video until next week so I figured I'd throw it up as-is here. There are some blank spots with just audio where I haven't filled in B-roll yet. Let me know if you like this sort of post and definitely open to any advice on the token ring card issues!

Patreon Vid: Tinkering with Sun Rays and Phones

Knocking out a couple quick investigations with some Sun Rays and Cisco dial peers I wanted to tackle. Don't worry I forgot to save the router config before shutting it off, as is tradition.

Merlin Phones

I should've waited one day to film that last video, the Merlin phones have started to show up. Notice one branded Lucent, the Merlin line had a very long lifespan. The AT&T branded one went out of warranty in 1986. I'm happy to have two of the metal stands, my understanding is they eventually switched to plastic.

Patreon Vid: AT&T Merlin and Linksys NAS

Taking a look at the first of many boxes of AT&T Merlin phone gear coming my way, and a bonus Linksys NAS from the early 2000s.

Early Vid: Cisco IP Phones

Figuring out how to get some Cisco 7960, 7965 and 7925 IP phones working on a 2821 router with Call Manager Express! Video should go live on the channel Friday!

Early Vid: Cisco Aironet Wireless Bridges

Taking a look at several Cisco Aironet 350 series wireless bridges from the early 2000s. We'll get a few wireless networks setup and explore inline power along the way.

Video live on the channel tomorrow!

Patreon Vid: New Server Day

Unboxing some "new" servers I've recently picked up and a quick look at some ADSL gear.

Early Vid: ATM Networking

Exploring ATM networking with a 3Com CELLPlex 7000 and CoreBuilder 7000. We'll try to get some Windows XP machines hooked up to these things with some Fore Systems ATM PCI cards.

EDIT: Luke has pointed out that Windows itself was assigning those IP addresses via APIPA. I had turned off Windows firewall on the ThinkCentre in the past, which was why the laptop could ping it, so basically I had a fully functional LAN the whole time 🤦‍♂️

I know this one is very early but I'...

Early Vid: Crestron Video Gear

Taking a look at some rack-mountable Crestron video switching and scaling gear, probably from the late 2000s.

Video goes live Friday!