Computers of the Disaster Zone Network

This page contains the specs and stories of the computers that have been a part of the Disaster Zone Network. Last updated March 23, 2010.

templar [Sun SPARCstation 10]

This machine was named after the Knights Templar. I was fond of the name since I spent some time in high school flying with the online game Subspace (now Continuum) player squadron Templar Knights. While sturdily built and elegantly designed, this machine did not see much service. It briefly worked as an all-purpose inetd, bind, and mail server through my college senior year unitl I realized the SuperSPARC processors were simply too slow to handle blogging software. During the time I used it, I gained an appreciation of Debian Linux which would later come in handy with learning Ubuntu. I had fun accessing this computer through a serial port (null modem) since I did not have a SUN keyboard or monitor.

Processor

Texas Instruments SuperSPARC, 40MHz (TMS390)

Memory

32 MB (2x 16MB, 70ns SIMM)

Storage Media

400MB SCSI Hard Drive

Operating System

Debian Linux/SPARC 3.0

Activation Date

2002.10.18

Network ID

139

Status

Offline - standby

divebomber [Quantex QP5/90XM-3]

Named after the famous Ju-87 Stuka bomber that embodied the brilliance and fear of the early WWII German Blitzkreig tactics. While not a military machine, the Quantex QP5/90XM-3 also has a distinctive case shape and loud noises. The 6-screw, all steel AT case is representative of its entire generation of home computers, large, unwieldy machines that designed for early adopters of technology. When I look at divebomber, I get fond memories of my earlier days with computers, using programs such as WordPerfect for DOS and pplaying games such as Star Control II and Master of Magic. I remember running Windows 3.11 and trying out Trumpet Winsock, various BBS, NCSA Mosaic, gopher, and other dated computer uses. This was my second computer ever, and first one I named.

Processor

Intel Pentium I, 133MHz

Memory

64 MB (4x16MB SIMM)

Chipset

PIIX4

Activation Date

1995.04.06

Retirement Date

2004.03.03 (estimate)

Status

Offline - disassembled

roses [Dell XPS T450]

Roses is the name of a shadowy, cold city from one of Glen Cook's Black Company fantasy novels. Similar to the was a militarily strategic city in the novel, for about 5 years, the computer "roses" was a critical part of the disaster zone network. It handled workstation duties throughout college and was the main platform on which I learned Slackware Linux. Before its conversion to a Linux box, it served as a Windows 98 workstation for school work and games. Roses worked well through both its Linux and Win98 years, and I expect it to work well once again if I need to take it out of retirement.

Processor

Pentium III (Coppermine) 450 MHz

Memory

256 MB (2x128 SDRAM)

Chipset

PIIX4

Activation Date

1999.05.10

Network ID

141

Status

Offline - standby

f451 [digital AlphaStation 200]

Farenheit 451, the temperature at which books burn according to the Ray Bradbury novel, is perhaps a bit melodramatic for a computer but very fitting in this case. The first thing I noticed about this computer was the excessively high temperature it seems to run at. It ran hot enough to serve as a room heater during winter nights in San Diego. Anyways, I decided that I absolutely had to have a heat realted name, and names like Inferno and Firestorm seemed too commonplace. I finally remembered the Ray Bradbury novel, liked its various themes of censorship and totalitarian states, and chose a shortened version of its name, f451. In addition to this, I decided on a whim that this machine would have to run FreeBSD, since I felt the daemon logo was more appropriate for a hot computer.

f451 was a stable system and it was enjoyable running FreeBSD. It took over server duties from divebomber for sometime until I moved to Canoga Park and gave it away to a fellow computer hobbyist, saiya, from the San Fernando Valley Linux Users Group. Altough it performed well, I grew tired of the heat source and was a bit happy to see it go.

Processor

233 MHz Alpha (64 bit)

Memory

64 MB (4x16MB SIMM)

Storage Media

1GB, 500MB SCSI Hard Drives

Video Card

Number Nine PCI Vide

Operating System

FreeBSD 5.0

Activation Date

2002.12.13

Retired

2003.10.01 (estimate)

Network ID

142

Status

Offline - given away

victory [sgi Indy R5K]

I've been impressed by the sleek styling and graphics capabilities of sgi machines for some time. When I finally got the chance to pick some used sgi Indys from my college's surplus hardware sale, I jumped at the chance. I remember the feeling of victory on acquiring these three machines, and thus they were named accordingly. Two of the machines worked, the others seemed dead and became replacement parts.

For some time, victory was used as a workstation because of the 23" sgi monitor I bought from ebay. However, the large and heavy CRT quickly became a frustration to move and the incentive to use it disappeared as its novelty wore off. While it was used, I had fun playing with the IRIX OS, and discovered the SGI user community site nekochan.net. The community site had all sorts of installable packages for various pieces of open source software that were surprisingly well integrated with the IRIX installer. The OpenGL screensavers on victory are still fun to watch especially considering the age of the machine.

Processor

R5000, 150MHz (64-bit RISC)

Memory

256 MB (8x 32MB SIMM)

Storage Media

2x 1GB Hard Drive, external SCSI CD-ROM

Video Card

XL-24 Video

Tasks

Backup Workstation,Trophy Computer

Operating System

SGI IRIX 6.5.14

Activation Date

2003.01.09

Network ID

143

Status

Offline - standby

triumph [sgi Indy R5K]

Another one of the sgi machines I acquired with in the same batch as victory. This one got traded to Kyle_S, a fellow slackware user from the irc.freenode.net channel #slackware in exchange for a Matrox g450 dual head video card. It was the only other one that worked out of box. I wonder how both the user and computer are doing these days.

Processor

R5000, 150MHz (64-bit RISC)

Activation Date

2003.01.09

Network ID

144

Status

Offline - traded

firefly [Apple Mac mini]

During the height of my interest with computer minitaurization, I discovered the Apple Mac mini. It was much smaller than any of the mini-ITX setups I had seen, so I decided to get one for home theater use. firefly was a great experience with learning the new and popular Mac OS X. It fulfilled its home theater duties well most of the time, but I did not spend as much time as I should have in ironing out some of the NFS hiccups my roommate reported since I was engrossed with the online video game Final Fantasy XI at the time.

I had also recently seen the TV series firefly, a sci-fi and western hybrid, and thought it would make a fun name for the Mac mini. The Mac mini had a bright LED power light and sleek design, playing off the word "firefly" like the Firefly-class spaceship from the TV show. I also thought the Apple fad was one that would burn bright and fade quickly, but this did not prove to be the case.

Processor

PowerPC G4, 1.25GHz

Memory

512MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM

Video Card

ATI Radeon 9200 (32MB RAM)

Storage Media

40GB ATA Hard Drive

Operating System

MAC OS X 10.3.9 (Panther)

Activation Date

2005.05.05

Network ID

145

Status

Offline - standby

vertigo [custom mini-ITX]

My first truly custom built pc, ordered in parts online and assembled at home. Although the case was small and eledgant from the outside, it was a nightmare to work with from the inside. I quickly gave this computer the name vertigo to capture both the irritable feeling of working inside this case, and as a nod to the Sandman graphic novels I had just finished reading.

vertigo served as a general purpose server during most of my time at Canoga Park. It also served the added function of being able to view community websites while playing the online video game Final Fantasy XI. This was invaluable as I was then able to reply to forum messages, look up item information and monster weaknesses when needed.

Upon moving back to San Diego, vertigo suddenly seemed less reliable as a server. After some time, it stopped working completely and I was forced to use delusions as a temporary server. The problem has since corrected itself, but I can no longer trust vertigo as a primary server. It is now a Windows XP test machine, which also finally allows me to use the full capability of the built-in Unichrome graphics card. Later on, although Linux could make use of the Unichrome card, several of the capacitors on the motherboard failed, and several on the power supply were bulging significantly, so I finally retired the machine.

Processor

VIA C3 Nehemiah M10000 1Ghz

Storage Media

40GB Samsung Notebook IDE HD

Activation Date

2004.11.25 (estimate)

Retirement Date

2006.07.06 (estimate)

Network ID

146

Status

Offline - disassembled

freedom [Dell PowerEdge SC440]

This is my first "business-class" machine. I purchased the most low end server from the Dell website for a measly $450 with no operating system pre-installed. It is very well built and easy to work with. I installed Ubuntu server edition on it and proceed to teach myself Ubuntu while setting it up as a general purpose server. This was accomplished quickly and it was running reliably after a few days.

I named this machine freedom mainly because I had just finished watching the anime series Gundam SEED. In the anime, a pair of robot fighting machines, the Freedom and the Justice, significantly outclassed their enemies. Likewise, despite being a low end model, the Dell PowerEdge SC440 significantly outclasses any of my other machines. I also liked the name freedom as I hope this machine will continue to give me freedom from technical worries. As of October 2007, this machine was replaced by pain, a virtual private server (VPS) at RapidVPS.

For some time, in late 2009 and early 2010, I experimented with using this machine as a Linux desktop. I ran Ubuntu 9.04 then 9.10 Desktop Edition during this time, and it actually worked rather well. However, after the experiences described in this post, I decided I was better off using my old Shuttle, delusions, as my Linux desktop instead. I posted an advertisement on Craigslist on 2010 March 31. As 2010 April 7, the machine was sold for $140.

Processor

Intel Pentium-D 3.0GHz (Presler)

Bogomips

~2x 6000

Memory

512MB (1x512MB DDR2, 667MHz)

Chipset

Intel 3000, 800MHz FSB

Video Card

ATI ES1000 (rev 02)

Storage Media

160GB 7.2K RPM SATA 3Gbps

Operating System

Ubuntu Server Edition 9.10

Activation Date

2007.06.19

Retired

2010.03.26

Status

Offline - sold 2010.04.07

delusions [Shuttle SN41G2B]

A sleek, compact pc originally configured for home theater support duties. After reassigning firefly to the home theater, delusions was retasked as the main workstation. The name "delusions" refers to my imagination that this machine can do more than it is capable of. Also, in its home theater role, it was a joke about audiophiles and videophiles in general. In some ways, being so critical of hardware performance can become delusional when seeing things that the mind wants to see.

delusions also has a long history as my gaming rig, having run multiplayer online games over the course of three years. For this purpose, it received several video card upgrades replacing the integrated video controller. delusions' hardware performance has served me reliably and the shuttle case is a pleasure to work with.

Processor

AMD Athlon 1700

Bogomips

~3000

Memory

1GB (2x512MB DDR)

Chipset

nVidia nForce2

Video Card

GeForce4 MX440 (nForce2 IGP)

Storage Media

40GB IDE HD, CD-ROM

Tasks

Secondary Workstation

Operating System

Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop

Network ID

149

Activation Date

2004.03.13

Status

Online

pain [RapidVPS Virtual Private Server]

pain is one partition among many somewhere in the RapidVPS collection of servers. The picture above was selected from the server room pictures and may or may not be where pain is actually located. pain received its name because it was rather painful for me to move disasterzone offsite and then learn the ropes of operating a VPS. However, since being setup, pain seems to be working reliably.

Plan

Rapid.One ($9.95/month)

Guaranteed/Burst CPU Speed

100MHz / 6GHz

Guaranteed/Burst RAM

128MB / 4GB

Disk Quota

5GB

Bandwidth Allowance

100GB/month

Tasks

General Purpose Server: web, ssh, mail, mysql, local dns

Operating System

Debian 4.0 (Etch)

Activation Date

2007.10.10

Status

Subscribed