Timex Sinclair 1000 and Atari 1200xl

I would have turned these two on and tested them, but there's a problem with the video setup. Anyways, here are the two of them:

Cop Equipment

About a week back we got a shipping pallet of cop equipment. There are hardened computers and laptops, flat panel screens, and data modems.

Panasonic CF-25: Soon to run Damn Small Linux

Pallet with mini-computers and boxes:


Rugged flatpanel:

Data Modem:
There was a box with about 30 of so of these nifty little boxes. They are Sierra Wireless 775 modems, capable of transmitting/receiving data over a cellular data network (I forget which one at the moment), and can pick up gps. They do require a sim card to send data, but at the very least, they will still function nicely as gps receivers.

Clustering Projects

Over the years, there has always been some sort of cluster development or another going on. At the moment, we are experimenting with Instant-Grid.Above: a stack of relativly fast pentium 4 nodes.
Above: the master node under the table and its monitor.
Below: a close-up of the master running Instant-Grid.
Before experimenting with Instant-Grid, we used a custom build of Parallelknoppix. When using it, at least three big/notable povray rendering clusters were made (probably more which I can't remember.) But Instant-Grid has a lot more features, and although its documentation is half in German, it is remerkably easy to use.

Computer Case Mod

There was an old dead TV lying around, and it was decided to turn it into a computer. Here are the preliminary results:
[front view] - The screen reflection is of my eeepc which I used to take this pic. The pictures are too dark because of the poor lighting conditions in the warehouse, and I was using the eeepc's built in camera instead of the regular camera.


[back view]

Note I described it with the adjective "preliminary." The power supply has not yet been mounted, and several other parts have yet to be mounted properly. Also, there's a static electricity buildup problem resulting from the lack of a proper ground in the case, which stops the screen from operationg properly.

Big Servers

Among all the computers and electronics here at the ACCRC, there are servers with a nice chunk of processing power available, sitting around and gathering dust. Some of the less heavy (weight and power) ones are being turned into Ubuntu install servers. These ones are just sitting around being useless at the minute. There are two I have documented, a Sun Enterprise 450 and an IBM 9406-5xx. Both appear to turn on and run, and I am focusing on the Enterprise for diagnosis because it has a VGA-compatible card and a serial port for input. (grrr... proprietary sun mouse/keyboard connector)

IBM 9406-5xx:



Sun Enterprise 450:



Are there any ideas on what these could be repurposed to do? Anyone going to slip us a fat wad of cash in exchange for either of them? Or does anyone know about getting by the system key protection on the 9406, or if it's even possible?

Cluster nodes

There are many, many, computers lying around the ACCRC. These are pictures of but a few of them. In the past, clusters have been made, usually running povray on parallelknoppix. They rendered pictures which were converted into animations.

With all this computing power available, what other kinds of distributed clustering jobs are possible? Any ideas?

Hewlett Packard 85

This is a picture of a functioning HP 85. The self-test runs, and basic programs run fine. No tape in the drive. It has 16k ram, and a .6mhz processor. Below is the back end , with a rom and a ram cartridge visible.