Monitoring the vintage server room (and reverse-engineering USB sensors) | Hacker News Reader

Monitoring the vintage server room (and reverse-engineering USB sensors)

oldvcr.blogspot.com

More awesome from the remarkable tech monster that ported a modern Mozilla Firefox port on the PowerPC Macintosh MacOS "Classic" (pre OS X) platform, for at least a decade the lone developer.

Windmill tilting boss level.

Classic will always have class.

("Have class" is American~ English slang for "sophisticated" or "worthy of envy", as in "upper class" vs "low class". 20th Century Cinema Standard.)

I like that.

So, on the right from the Mac, is that fire extinguisher or bug spray?

Fire extinguisher.

Fire extinguisher. We call it the budget halon system. ;)

Thank God, no debugger needed.

Portable air conditioners don't work.

It works fine. The room stays cool in summer because the outflow duct is wide for good flow, plus insulated and separated from the rest of the room so it doesn't radiate its heat back in. I've seen some bad portable A/C installs and they were inefficient because they did something like make the exhaust tube too long, or reduce the calibre (thereby making it basically a partial blockage), or fail to insulate things properly. They're not a panacea, but they do the job.

Are you OP? Have you looked into a minisplit? You can install it through any wall. Some come with linesets long enough to run to an interior room.

It's what I use for my "server room."

I find how untidy that room is deeply disturbing for some reason..

We're all different, I guess.

Also didn't know WG could snoop USB, a neat trick!

Well, we're moving, so. At one stage it was cleaner!

Why do you need a 12,000 BTU air conditioner for 3 computers?

It's more than that, and the POWER6 in particular and the RAIDs run a bit warm anyway. It may be overkill but it's never failed to keep the room cool even during bad summers.

Maybe I'm biased but this seem common with all the "retro computer" enthusiasts I have met.

At least in my own experience, using vintage tech often requires collecting a bunch of ancillary equipment to get it to work, communicate, etc. Often you'll end up needing to keep multiple generations of networking equipment, monitors, peripherals, all only compatible with certain systems due to either age or brand ecosystem.

I've seen a few neat setups where people specialize in one era of one brand. I am not one of those people and my computer room looks a lot like the pictures.

Is it possible to gather non-standard hardware and have a tidy room? (Whether you are developing, collecting, studying, or just using it doesn't seem to matter.)

It would certainly oppose all of my expectations.

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