Thursday, 5 July 2012

Retrochallenge mission accomplished. Need new mission!

So this morning's Retrochallenge 2012 activity was reuniting the Dreamcast with the VAX and setting the VAX up to act as a dhcp and NFS server to the DC (copying the config from home).

Sundry small sysadmin tasks later (adding swap, users, mounting /home from the vax, installing some binary packages and starting a build for the latest PHP (don't ask)), and there was just time to break for the pre-9am coffee.

So, what do we have:
  • wopr - an 128M VAXstation 4000/90A acting as a NFS server to
  • orac - a 16M SEGA Dreamcast with sh3 CPU
Both have user logins and run web servers (wopr with PHP). orac has also run X (640x480 with a composite video to VGA adaptor is not a pretty sight).

Both have a 'falken' login which runs the standard NetBSD /usr/games/wargames script (the password *is* the obvious one :)

So, what next for Retrochallenge 2012:

Some thoughts:
  • The wargames script really could do with being a little more faithful to the movie. Per character delay, more interaction, prompting for Global Thermonuclear War or even a nice game of chess :)
  • Turning this into the worlds strangest honeypot. I have a sparc classic with two network interfaces which could act as a monitor, but what apps and accounts should be on the target VAX & Dreamcast machines? Samba? some hugely vulnerable web apps?
  • Running an sh3 emulator on the VAX & a VAX emulator on the Dreamcast?
  • Adding as many alternate architectures to the cluster as possible. Partial marks only for using VPN connections to alternate locations
Or... something else?

Your suggestions wanted!
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6 comments:

  1. Anders Carlsson5 July 2012 at 15:00

    Are the systems already benchmarked towards eachother? Run a unit of SETI@home or whatever is popular these days, just to see which one does it better.

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    1. abs6 July 2012 at 03:24

      I think SETI@home only made precompiled binaries available and I doubt they had VAX & Dreamcast in mind :-p

      Hmm, I could spin up some standard benchmarks such as lmbench to give a feel for how they compare. Anything else to mind?

      Delete
  2. Mark Wickens5 July 2012 at 15:38

    You need to find something for that VAXstation to do which requires a bit of grunt - that's a 40 VUPS VAX with 128 MB of RAM - that's like asking what to do with a McDonald Douglas F-4 Phantom - open the throttles and go vertical!

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    Replies
    1. abs6 July 2012 at 03:29

      Unfortunately I've found an easy way to bring it to its knees: just run g++ - the memory & CPU requirements for a modern gcc are quite amazing :(

      Anyway, running as an NFS server for the Dreamcast while the Dreamcast is compiling PHP is at least keeping it from boredom - CPU utilisation tends to run at a continual 10%-25% :)

      Delete
  3. Doctor Who7 July 2012 at 14:25

    Now where did you find a BBA for the Dreamcast? I've been looking for one for ages.

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    Replies
    1. abs7 July 2012 at 16:36

      I left a Dreamcast + BBA search active on eBay until something came by at a merely exorbitant price... :/ Maybe its time someone picked up the DCEXT project ... http://www.fuzzymuzzle.com/Kiyoshi/DCEXT.htm

      Delete

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