The folks at The Serial Port rescued a Total Control terminal server from an abandoned ISP, follow along as they outline why this thing is so awesome and see if they can get it fired up!
2024-09-20 19:51:45 +0000 UTC View PostThe Serial Port and I have decided to collaborate even further by extending access to The Serial Port Discord to my $5 and up Patreon tiers! We really hope this will help grow the “netro” and enterprise networking+computing community. If you’re not in there already I think you’ll find all sorts of great conversations, posts, and folks to hang out with. As of this post you should have access immediately!
2024-09-12 13:42:26 +0000 UTC View Post
What I've picked up (so far) at VCF Midwest. Not sure how I'll get this in the suitcase. TSA might have questions.
2024-09-07 22:53:35 +0000 UTC View Post
Finally pulled the trigger on an OSSC to up the VGA capture game and... so far I'm impressed. A better HDMI->USB card is on the way and hopefully I'll be able to do better justice for this gear in future videos 🤞
2024-09-05 03:29:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Taking a look at a PC Magazine issue from June 9th, 1987.
2024-09-03 01:49:36 +0000 UTC View Post
The Serial Port explores where network switches came from: the DEC LAN Bridge 100!
They've outdone themselves with this awesome look at the origins of ethernet (including thicknet) and we get to see the DEC LAN Bridge in action!
Swapping out a bad POWER5+ CPU in my IBM p5 550Q machine and finally getting to set up real working LPARs!
Video should go live Friday!
My Dad bought this TRS-80 Model III back in the 1980s and we finally had a reason to get this over to my house. This is mostly an interview portion of what will eventually be a full video on this TRS-80 (the full video will include much more detail, a hopefully-quick capacitor repair job, and actually trying the machine out.)
I figured it's worth posting this now since I have the footage and I'm not sure when the full video will come about.
Drove to Kansas this weekend to pick up a huge haul of gear, including an IBM RS/6000!
2024-08-04 23:35:58 +0000 UTC View Post
Taking a look at a Sun Microsystems StorEdge S1 three disk SCSI array from the early 2000s!
Video should go live on the channel Friday!
Next video will be about the Sun StorEdge S1 — a three disk SCSI array from the early 2000s. Long time viewers will know it's been a while since some Sun stuff has made an appearance, so I'm excited to dive into this thing; I bought it over a year ago but haven't powered it on. Realistically this video will be ready to go live next weekend, I want to spend a good amount of time on it and do the Sun gear justice. Feels good to be starting on a "classic" clabretro Sun video!
And it's t...
By popular demand, trying to get video output from a PIX 520 firewall.
2024-07-25 00:09:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Firing up a Cisco PIX 520, retro rack update, remodel update.
2024-07-24 02:45:28 +0000 UTC View Post
It... just worked? Literally pasted in the example config from the router's documentation and was immediately able to get an IP. Added a simple NAT config and bam... online. I thought this part would take days!
2024-07-13 19:06:15 +0000 UTC View Post
I got the gigabit fiber uplink to the Intel Express stack working... with a surprising combo of hardware and software changes.
2024-07-08 00:47:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Recently snagged a uBR7114 on eBay, which should let me setup a local broadband network. It's just DOCSIS 1/1.1 but that's plenty for messing around. What drew me to this one is that usually you need an upconverter (i.e. more $$$ and more gear) on the downstream port, but this one has an integrated upconverter (the port labeled DS0 RF).
Anyway I'm waiting on some attenuators and splitters I need before I can really get going so this might be a couple videos out, but the machine boots u...
Throwing some PVDM2s in a Cisco 2821 to try out some more voice cards and taking a look at some of the stuff I've been getting lately.
2024-06-19 01:36:39 +0000 UTC View Post
The Serial Port continues their dial-up ISP series by adding RADIUS support!
2024-06-14 21:24:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Let's get a Dreamcast online. This video is all about me learning how to use VIC, or Voice Interface Cards, and combining a bunch of Cisco gear together to get multiple dial-up lines available down here in the basement.
Video goes live tomorrow or Friday!
This one was quite the slog... and not entirely successful. But pretty fun along the way and I learned a ton about setting up Windows 95 VMs and networking.
Video goes live tomorrow afternoon!
I found a copy of Microsoft Windows 95 Resource Kit at a thrift store last weekend and it had a fascinating chapter: "Server-Based Setup." It turns out Windows 95 had a thin-client-esque mode in which the install could be stored on a Windows server share and clients could boot off just a floppy.
So I of course dove right in, but first needed to figure out the best way to get Windows 95 going on some emulators. The video is about 20 minutes in but I'm going to be out of town this weeken...
The DIN cables for the disk drive finally came in, let's load up some software. If you saw part one skip to 11:52 for the new stuff; I just exported it all as one video.
2024-05-25 15:12:12 +0000 UTC View Post
I wanted to test some C64 software I picked up at VCF East and what I thought would be a two hour ordeal has drug on two days. I'm waiting on some DIN cables from Amazon so I figured I'd split things up and post what I have!
2024-05-23 03:28:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Trying to get a local early 2000s P2P network going... without luck. Theoretically Limewire can behave in a serverless fashion (Napster's demise, more on that later), but no luck.
I've also tried running Openap, a reverse-engineered version of the Napster server from 2001, and Opennap NG, a fork of Opennap from ~2005. Napster required a centralized server to function, whereas Limewire and others were truly peer-to-peer via (I think?) Gnutella.
At any rate... I'm ex...
The Serial Port is back with the next installment of their Archie deep-dive, a tool for indexing FTP archives in the early '90s. They do some serious software archaeology to hunt down a version of Archie to get up and running for the first time in many years!
2024-05-11 00:42:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Stacking some Cisco 3550 series switches with GigaStack GBIC modules, all managed with the Cisco Cluster Management System from the early 2000s!
Video goes live Friday!
Making progress on stacking some Cisco 3550 series switches... with the Cisco Cluster Management Suite software. Which I'm guessing no one actually used, but gotta love those quasi-pixel art renditions of the 3550 gear.
2024-05-07 00:10:37 +0000 UTC View Post
A future video idea and some eBay pickups.
2024-04-27 20:51:35 +0000 UTC View Post
I had heard a long time ago about PCMCIA wi-fi cards lurking inside some early routers and decided to take a look. Sure enough... I found one!
We'll try to get it working on Windows 7 and some old Ubuntu distros, with some success.
Goes live on the channel Friday!
