,,, jmcunx OCC 3
Old Computer Challenge Number 3 Notes
For OCC 3, I resurrected an old tower that has just a
wired connection, specs from neofetch.
DIR Solene's OCC3 Challenge
System Information, some from neofetch:
=======================================
OS: NetBSD 9.3 i386
Packages: 189 (pkg_info)
CPU: AMD 586-class (1), 333MHz
Memory: 203MiB / 511MiB
root: /dev/wd0a - Size 11G - Used 2.5G Avail: 8.3G
home: /dev/wd0e - Size 7G - Used 4.2G Avail: 2.4G
Picture of the System, normally it would be on the floor:
IMG Picture of the System
Summary:
========
PROS:
-----
* I really like the Large Text Screen, no glasses.
* tmux, irssi, mutt and lynx works great and meets
most of my needs.
* console cut/paste via a mouse works great.
* Since no GUI type applications, I notice hardly any
speed difference.
CONS:
-----
* No wireless.
* I really miss reading my daily comics.
* I am unable to update my WEB Page for this challenge,
that will need to wait.
* I miss the convenience of X, but a minor
thing. But I could not view prints people posted in
\#oldcomputerchallenge on librachat :)
* Anxiously waiting for a hardware crash. I doubt that
will happen, but this PC is over 25 years old and
already has some eccentrics. Hoping the eccentrics
are due to the upgrade hack from 7.0.2 to 9.3.
Some Day Soon:
--------------
* Get the CDROM working, praying it is not a
motherboard issue, then do a full install of NetBSD
9.3 to correct issues with pkgsrc (day 1 below).
* A lot of people in this challenge was using Gemini, I
will need to investigate that and maybe migrate to it.
Day 7: Sunday, July 16, 2023
----------------------------
* All went fine, another slow day with a bit of lynx,
nethack, email, IRC, USENET. But I did manage to
find an old DVD Drive for this system, it came from
an old PC a relative was discarding. I hope when
I replace that munged CDRROM Drive, I will be able
to boot and do a full install NetBSD 9.3, replacing
the 9.3/7.02 mix I have right now on this system :)
Day 6: Saturday, July 15, 2023
------------------------------
* Some odd network issues, outside of that, very quiet
and slow.
Day 5: Friday, July 14, 2023
----------------------------
* Not much happened today. Spent the day away from
computers :)
Day 4: Thursday, July 13, 2023
------------------------------
* Fixed the issue with that program (day 3 below),
it was a memory overflow in a totally different area
of the program. Using '-O1' highlighted it. Odd that
program had no issues on OpenBSD and Linux but failed
as it should have on NetBSD.
* Rest of the day, lynx, nethack, email, IRC, USENET
and nothing.
Day 3: Wednesday, July 12, 2023
-------------------------------
* I fixed some issues with programs I have and using
git and 'git push' worked fine.
* But discovered weirdness with my setup, one of my
programs that calls localtime will crash if compiled
with -O1, works with -O0. Other programs calling
localtime with -O1 works. I guess something I did :)
It works on Linux and OpenBSD with -O1, but core
dumps on this system using NetBSD. Something to look
at tomorrow.
Day 2: Tuesday, July 11, 2023
-----------------------------
* Today was just spent hacking my backup script to copy
changed files to a set of diskettes as encrypted
files. That was successful. I had to ensure space
would not be exceeded when copying to a 1.44mb
Diskette. This required the use of 2 Diskettes.
* But, I had to "cheat", I needed to upload my ssh
public key for this PC to github, since X fails
to run due to a framebuffer issue, I had to use my
main Laptop to do that :( This was needed to upload
a config script I had to change for use with this
PC. I did not want to loose any git changes should
the hardware fail.
* Now I believe I can do everything I need to do.
Day 1: Monday, July 10, 2023
----------------------------
* For the last few days have been spent trying to
upgrade NetBSD from 7.0.2 to 9.3. The issue is the
CDROM is munged. It opens and closes by itself every
so often. That means it is impossible to boot a CD.
* I had repurposed this PC over 10 years ago
for a backup system using NetBSD when v6.0 was
released. That release added Y2038 fixes for i386
systems. IIRC it was the first "free" system to add
that fix.
* After many tries playing with the bios and reboots,
hoping to get lucky, I settled on using sysupgrade(8)
via Upgrading NetBSD. I used the major release
upgrade method. To my surprised, that worked
fine. But it broke pkgsrc. To fix pkgsrc I removed
directories "/var/db/pkg" and "/usr/pkg", then
installed the packages. That seemed to work OK,
but I do have a odd minor issues with a couple
of installed packages. Nothing to prevent me from
using this system.
* Rest of Day One was spent using rsync to update
$HOME from my main laptop.
Epilogue
--------
* I was able to replace the CDRROM Drive with one
scavenged from a Junk PC a relative gave me. The
relative was a heavy smoker at the time, thus all
the internals of that PC are covered with tar goo.
But the CDROM drive was isolated and was fine. This
solved all the flakiness I had with the old CDROM.
* This means I was able to do a full install of NetBSD
9.3. The install corrected all the issues I had during
OCC 3 due to the mix of 7.03 and 9.3 items :)
* Obviously I investigated Gemini, that is a very
cool protocol. I will probably move my site to gemini.
Back:
=====
DIR Back to my OCC Page
DIR Back to my Gopher Hole
$Id: gophermap,v 1.12 2025/07/14 12:34:54 jmccue Exp $