Truck Stop: Wampyr.

Wampyr

For all sensible purposes, this page should be treated as history since it really hasn't been updated much since Jun 13th ,1995.

For the odd minded, who like to know these things, here's a little bit about the network that Wampyr lives on. I have only listed the hosts that you are likely to see, since most of the rest are never turned on or too crap to admit to owning (Well not many people thought you could network Tosh 1200's!). In the main this page is all drivel, and not up to date - But then, I only wrote it because people continually hassled me to know what things were.

The four main machines are Wampyr, Baphomet, Elfish and Mischief. Wampyr is a Unix server, running Redhat Linux 4 - It sort of looks after the other Unix boxes, but they have a habit of ignoring it. It is also the mail gateway to the outside world. It is a P90 with about two gig of disk and really doesn't do a lot any more except get my mail. It is about to be replaced by a Sparc 5, because Linux doesn't seem capable of running for more than a year or so without falling to bits (can you tell I am cross with it?).

Baphomet is a biggish Sun Sparc running Solaris. It is the main machine for people to use, and the only one with a good and big enough monitor to do anything pretty on... It has lots of memory, lots of disk and lots of cables - It mainly exists for me to check out new applications, look at pretty pictures and store rubbish on.

Mischief is a VAX 3900 running VMS 7.0 with UCX. It is the cluster and, in theory, Pathworks and Novell server for the PC's on the LAN. It has a few gig of disk, 64M of memory, 96 serial ports and other assorted interfaces no-one would ever want to use. Hippo and Rugrat would also live on the VAX-Cluster with Mischief, but there seems to be a problem with 7.0 and they won't boot in now. Ah well, c'est la vie. The other VAX, Hicom has a page to itself, although the machine that actually answers as 'hicom.org' these days (it still has to be around as a nameserver) is an NT 4.0 box.

Micky is also a VMS machine - A VAX 3100 with a big hefty graphics head. It runs new versions of VMS, mainly for testing networky things, and has Cobol and database stuff on as well to keep some sick perverts I know amused.

Winona is a VAX 3100 running Ultrix. She used to live in my bedroom, but Jim stole her because she had a good display - This has probably scarred me psychologically for life! Winona used to be a tribute to the power of good thick gaffer tape as a means for fixing disk drives, but one day, in a fit of doing things properly I used a Black and Decker hammer drill and a hacksaw to do the job "properly". Winona doesn't really do much - She just sits there looking pretty and being a good graphics workstation. I doubt I'll be content with keeping Ultrix on it much longer. (slight update here, I sat on it, now it doesn't work any more).

Elfish is a Windows NT 4.0 server, with Microsoft Information Server on it - It has 3G of disk and doesn't really do much except run the LAN. It has nameservers, mailservers and all sorts of odd things on it. Basically though, it just exists to feed the other machines on the LAN.

Shonky is sweet, it is the LAN backup and logging server - It is a Win95 box with a writeable CD and spends its time wasting rewriteable CD's by crashing when it's backing up to them - You have to love Windows. Pixie, Naughty and Cheech are Windows-95 workstations all pretty much the same and Juniper is an NT 4.0 machine most of the time.

Poggin and Runt are Linux laptops, they both have ether and modem connections and Runt in theory is meant to live in the bathroom. I recon you can take ethernetting a house too far, alas... Jim doesn't. Hippie is an Hp200 palmtop with a cellular modem, it's sweet. Teapot lives in the kitchen and doesn't work very well, but then it does run Linux so that may be why.

That's it really for the useable machines. There are a few other VAXes dotted around as cluster nodes, mainly serving peripheral devices and the odd Unix host that aren't really worth using. Unfortunately, since I have to keep up to date on manufacturers systems, I have to have and use them ;) Somewhere dotted in here as well there are various laptops that really are best used for propping rat cages up! There seem to be a few VAXstations on the stairs, but I have run out of power supplies and motivation, so they will probably stay there for ever. Oh, there's a Prime MIPS you'll catch a glimpse of if you look at some of the office pictures, that makes a really nice office chair.

A few pictures of all of this mess can be found at http://www.lorry.org/misc/Oldhouse/


Michael Lawrie's 'Lorry' homepage. Email: lorry@lorry.org