Dissecting the HMC 4.5 system for fun (and profit?)
The HMC is a Linux-based system which boots to a customized environment and launches a Java applet that can be used to manage POWER systems. HMC 4.5 comes on...
Posts by Year
2024
IBM 3151 Shenanigans!
I recently got an IBM 3151 ASCII Display Station, which is a (somewhat) VT100-compatible terminal with a nice IBM look and feel to it. My unit has a green tu...
Reading Incremental Rotary Encoders in Quadrature in Software via GPIO
Incremental Encoders (IE) utilize two out-of-phase channels to carry information about the direction and speed of motion of a rotating shaft, such as the out...
Getting NVIDIA Visual Profiler running in 2024
NVIDIA Visual Profiler has been discontinued in favor of the NSight Compute suite, which does not support older GPUs (so… NVIDIA, f-u!). Having to use a vene...
Installing NetBSD on woefully underpowered hardware
It’s no secret I have a knack for weird and generally useless computing devices. Today, I’ll dive into the wonderful world of NetBSD, and how I installed the...
2023
Quarterly Book Review - When We Cease to Understand the World
Dear readers: life has been busier than ever. My hobbies have escalated dramatically and I’ve taken up projects such as rewiring the basement, fabricating my...
Today I Learned… about Windows CE!
I’ve been wondering about the internals of Windows CE today and I learned that the Kernel of CE 6.0 has been released under a semi-open source, with a “share...
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2022
Highlights from Linux Day Milano 2022
For the first time after the global pandemic we (UnixMiB) were able to organize another Linux Day and it’s been an absolutely awesome experience. This year I...
Installing an OS to a physical hard disk using a VM
Alright, this is a quickie. In an ill-fated attempt to install OS/2 Warp 4.52 to the bespoke IGEL D210 thin client, I relearned that you can use a physical h...
Defeating Windows’ SAM
It is well known that Windows NT’s Security Account Manager (SAM) wasn’t all that sophisticated in the early days of NT, and that it can easily be circumvent...
Quarterly Book Review - The Soul of a New Machine
Welcome to the first instalment in this new series of articles titled “Quarterly Book Review”. In this series I’ll (randomly) pick a book I’ve read either re...
Bad GPU performance? Blame your drivers!
2022-06-06:jack23247 Good news and bad news: the system has suffered a critical failure due to a faulty PSU, that rendered the OS unbootable: funnily enou...
Resolutions for 2022
This post is a statement, a collection of my resolutions for 2022, in the hope that I’ll come back here in December and that I’ll be able to write a positive...
Restoring a Sun Blade 1500
I recently bought a Sun Blade 1500 Red from a network admin that used it for his work: it’s not a powerful machine by any means, but I got it under the impre...
2021
Installing OS/400 V4R4 on an AS/400 Model 150
Back in June I got a pallet of AS/400 stuff from a fellow collector who is downsizing his rather impressive collection. The haul included a pair of model 150...
Building the PREEMPT_RT-patched Linux Kernel
Note to reader The bulk of this post was written back in November 2020, when we had no idea about what we were facing, and was essentially completed in...
Installing Solaris 10 on a Sun Netra T1 from the network
Since acquiring a Sun UltraSCSI disk array, I’ve decided to revive an old Netra T1 (aldebaran.local.net) I had lying around to make an Unix media box. Since ...
The bittersweet tale of the 9406-170
I recently recovered an AS/400 9406-170 with an expansion chassis I got for scrap value: the seller advertised it as “barely functioning, can’t find VGA port...
Booting NetBSD/VAX 1.5.3 from network on a MicroVAX 3300
Since I’ve owned my MicroVAX, it’s always had some kind of problem with its peripherals: someone had left the tape in the TK50 for years and it was completel...
Core Transfer
“To initiate a core transfer, please deposit substitute core in receptacle.” ―Aperture Science Announcement System The AS/400 is a weird platform: it...
2020
Analyzing the various Linux system logs
Yesterday I’ve been asked by a friend who is currently working on an autonomous driving platform, running ROS on Ubuntu Linux, how to understand what caused ...
Installing and configuring Solaris 10/09 on an HP/Compaq nc6000
Last year I saved two HP/Compaq nc6000 from the workplace’s junk box: they are nice little systems equipped with a Centrino/Pentium M processor, up to 2GB of...
Using Clear Linux as a daily driver
Clear Linux as a desktop distribution is dead. Long live Clear Linux as a cloud and server distribution.
2019
Two years of Linux Day Milano
Since 2017 I’ve been studying computer science in Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, and after a couple months I joined UnixMiB, the students’ Linux U...
Thin client tales: installing Alpine on an IGEL D210
Some time ago, the warehouse manager at work came to me, knowing well that I collect junk, carrying three unassuming cardboard boxes: “Do you want these?” “Y...
From Excel to automation with Ruby
For the last few days I’ve been working in tech support for a large company: I’ve been hired to assist in backing up, mastering and restoring a couple of com...
Running OmniOS CE on Hyper-V
OmniOS Community Edition is a Unix distribution based on Illumos, the modern and open OpenSolaris based kernel. OmniOS is blazingly fast and packs a lot of f...
Installing AIX 4.3.3 on an IBM RS/6000 43P Model 100 (7248-100)
The IBM RS/6000 43P Model 100 (7248-100) is an entry-level workstation made by IBM in circa 1996. My machine has 96MB of RAM, 2x2GB SCSI disks and a 100MHz P...