Missed a Day

Whoops! I missed a day. This post is therefore being posted retroactively.

Today (Yesterday, when I'm writing this) has been (was) very "full." I got up at about 10:30 and prepared to head out to the NAU Bookstore to pick up the T-Shirt I ordered back in March for Megan. (Oops, a bit of a delay in the delivery, but I can't say I mind too terribly much.) I also happen to have received the video card for flatdell and the hundred-stack of Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs yesterday, which was a nice bonus. I did also actually go shooting with the D300 and everything. There's even some nice images I think, but I haven't really had a chance to go through them yet.

Flatdell's new video card installed perfectly. I had to bring the machine and the card into the office to get it all set up, because I lack my own tools right now, but once Mel and I got the brackets rearranged, the card installed great and the drivers installed pretty easily.

Not too terribly much progress was made on the ThinkPad/OPENSTEP project. I burned the CD and the OPENSTEP boot discs seem to realize that the CD is there, but the machine seems still unable to read the disc -- that or I burned it wrong. I may try another (more conventional) CD to see if the machine is physically capable of reading the Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs, and I'm also getting a different CD image to try.

I also lacked progress on Meaghan's laptop, mainly because I had a bunch of other things going on. I'll work on that more today or tomorrow.

Progress on Projects

Today I finally went to my PO Box at NAU's Central Campus post office location, underneath the NAU Bookstore. It was after today's Freshman Orientation information session, Meaghan and I stopped in to check the prices of some books and for me to pick up a package I've been waiting for.

So tonight's project involves finally getting Meaghan's little old PII Dell Latitude CPi working. I've already got the new hard disc installed, and I had Meaghan drop it off at my room. I just need to put Windows 98 or Windows NT4 Workstation on it here. I'm going for NT4 personally, since the goal is something that'll be fast and reliable. I just need to find out where I put imager, and we'll be good. Imager does include a blank Windows 2000 Pro image, so I may install that purely for the fact that it's easily available.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to go to Postal Services again to pick up the new graphics card for flatDell, along with my hundred-stack of Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs. Part one of that project is to get flatDell upgraded with the graphics card, and get some games installed onto it, at which point I'm going to remove the bootcamp partition from my iMac.

After that, the next project is to install OpenSTEP 4.2 on the ThinkPad 760ED. I've already got the two install floppies made and they  both work well, now it's just a matter of burning the install CD. With luck, and the Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs, it'll all work properly, and I'll have OpenSTEP running on real hardware.

Plans for the 760s

Well, I've started working on the decision for exactly what I'm going to do to the ThinkPad 760 computers. One of them, the 760CD, will remain the same, because it's already nearly a museum quality piece of hardware.

The other two, a ThinkPad 760EL and a ThinkPad 760ED shall be combined to make one ThinkPad that I have decided will be nearly museum quality. I'm going to then throw the worst bits away, keeping the extra bay modules and anything else I think I'll need.

The exact plan is to make the 760ED the base of my new setup, because it's the fastest of my 760s and it has a nice big 1024x768 resolution display, compared with the 800x600 display on the CD and the EL. I am going to take the top case, the keyboard and the rear port cover from the 760EL and put them onto the ED. I'll also be keeping the floppy, battery and dead hard disc from the EL as a "just in case" pile of spare parts. One of the things I will then eventually do is put a new drive in the EL's hdd caddy, so I can have a drive for Windows and a drive for OPENSTEP4.2, which is the operating system I'd eventually like to run on the ED.

Tonight, I've actually gotten Windows 98 installed on the ED. It was surprisingly easy, and I'm pleasantly surprised with how easy the whole installation process was. Right now, I'm just copying the variety of Internet Explorer installers to it's hard disc so I can see how "modern" I can make Windows98.

Windows 98, at least the OEM version I installed, isn't really as bad as I remember it being so long ago. It's got some stuff I don't even remember in Windows ME, like "Windows Family Logon." (Although I may just not have looked hard enough, or needed WFL that long ago.) The cool thing about Windows Family Logon is that it actually separates profiles, and keeps them very mildly secure. You set up an initial profile, and from that point forward you create new accounts as needed, and you can determine exactly how much customization is needed for each account. You can also set passwords, but I haven't bothered with that yet.

Another thing I would like (but am unlikely) to do is recell and/or revive some of the spare 760  batteries. With as fast as the 760ED is, or as fast as the CD can be if I run a more slim OS, a 760 that's got two batteries would be a great notetaking machine. Two batteries that can get 3 hours each would be great for a portable system. Plus, since I have three batteries total, I could pop in a third and really get all-day computing.

Errands

Today has been very busy. Lots of errands were run. I've been to the helpdesk, to Staples & Walmart, and I've just now gotten back from getting food (Taco Bell) for Glenn, who now has a job at the front desk of Gabaldon. In a few more moments, I'm heading out with Meaghan, Tyson, Mel and probably a few other people to go see the new Indiana Jones movie.

As an update on 'Precious' the Dell Inspiron 530s, I have decided not to get a new monitor for it yet, I am going to run it with the 19" dell trinitron monitor, which I found out is capable of running at 1600x1200@75Hz, which is a very viewable resolution and refresh rate. I'm going to try color calibrating the thing in the next week or so.

I'm also still looking at graphics cards for it. I've found nearly a dozen individual suitable cards, but I'm not a hundred percent certain which one I'm going to get yet.

"Gaming" PC

Today after taking the picture for Photo365, Meaghan and I headed to Staples, mainly to look around. In our exploring, we discovered a very cheap Dell. A Dell that I bought, somewhat uninformed about it, but I'm very happy with the decision. The idea is that I don't like dual-booting the iMac into Windows for games, and a slim desktop system would be able to take a graphics upgrade would be a very helpful type of computer to have around.

If it weren't on clearance, this particular system would've cost about $600. Luckily they had it on massive clearance discount, so I brought it home for about $300. The trip home with it was quite fun. Meaghan and I had to carry the CPU separately from all of the other stuff, because the original box wasn't included. Meaghan has decided that it's name needs to be precious, because it's such an adorable little computer.

The specs of the system in it's base form aren't too terribly spectacular. It's got a 1.8GHz "Pentium Dual Core" processor in it, 2GB of memory, a 320GB hard disc, a mega DVD burner, and a card reader. The motherboard has an Intel GMA X3100, but one nice surprise is that it's not using the expected 965 Express series chipset, it's got a G33/G31 Express family chipset, which means it's capable of using much nicer processors, like either the Wolfdale E8500 or the Yorkfield Q9300 processor. It's also got a PCI Express X16 slot, and it should be capable of holding up to 4 or 8 gigs of memory.

My plan for that PCIe slot is an 8-series nVidia GPU with 256mb or more of memory. I've found five candidates on Newegg, which I'll talk about in a later post I think.

Right now the thing's running Vista Home Premium, but I think I'm going to load MSDNAA Vista Business onto it. Other than that, I'll put Office2007 on it, and as soon as I get the new GPU, I'll install the games on it and remove Vista from the iMac I think. Tonight's project is burning a Vista Business DVD and getting this machine up to date.

Speaking of the iMac, I'm not 100% sure what I want to do with the iMac yet. This system is shaping up to be more powerful than the iMac, and it's definitely more expandable. I'm just not sure about whether or not I'm too attached to Mac OS X and/or the iMac itself to impulse-sell the iMac. More on that in yet another blog post.

Reinstalling Vista

Well, I finally got what I perceive to be "enough" time to go through and back up all of the data from the ThinkPad R61i, and reformat the thing to get a fresh install of Windows Vista Ultimate. Everything was getting slow and quite disorganized, so I figured I'd go ahead and get everything cleared out and set back up. Mainly, I want to be ready for my trip this summer where everything will need to be fast.

Another big concern was that I've been somewhat irresponsible in the management of my Vista system so far -- I wasn't sure for a very long time of exactly which software I wanted on the machine, so I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling a bunch of different pieces of software several times. That, a few mistakes with some developer tools, and the upgrade from Home Premium to Ultimate kind of caused things to become disorganized in the system. My intent after this reformat is to keep everything going well not only for the summer, but for Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 as well.

Maybe it's a bit of a far-fetched goal, but for this install of Vista to last until Fall 2009 would be pretty great. I've had Mac OS X installs last that long, so my presumption is that if I do it right this time around, I can have the setup last quite awhile.

Another thing I'm doing to try to increase the longevity of the install is to actually keep up with a backup regiment. In the next week or so after I find and install all of my favorite utilities, my intent is to make a master backup onto DVDs that I can fall back upon if necessary. In addition, I'm going to be doing a complete PC backup on a weekly basis.

For software, I'm going to go with Outlook for mail, and I'm going to try to find a Calendar connector for the Oracle Calendar setup. For productivity software beyond Office, I can't think of anything I really need aside from the Adobe Creative Suite, which I'd like to buy for the Windows machine at some point. (Although until then, I'll just do Photoshop CS3 on it's own, because getting all of them is quite bothersome.) I'll probably grab XChat and Pidgin, and a few other little utilities like the VNC client and whatnot will fall into place over time.

So here's to keeping my Windows system running better!

Overview of Summer Server Shenanigans.

This summer, I'm getting three machines that count both as desktop personal computers, and will probably be used as server computers. The first two, and almost the more important two, are the two Hewlett Packard e-PC units I'm getting and will be using. They're Pentium III computers running at about 1.2GHz, and if I remember correctly, mine will have either 256 or 512 megabytes of memory. The second, and almost certainly the more powerful and versatile of the group, is a Sun Ultra60 UNIX workstation. The U ltra60 is to have about a gigabyte of memory, and two 18-gig SCSI hard discs. It's also got a DVD-ROM drive to make installation of Solaris 10 more easy.

On the two HP e-PCs, I intend to install Windows Server 2003. One of them will run IIS and SharePoint services, the other will be the primary domain controller. (I'm inside my own LAN, don't worry!) I'm not exactly sure how all of the services will shake down onto the two machines, but I think it'll go like this:

• Machine 1
• Primary Domain Controller
• Terminal Services.
• Distributed File Services
  
• Machine 2
• IIS/PHP/MySQL/SharePoint
• Exchange
• Distributed File Services

My intent is to learn even more about networking with Windows Server 2003, which I am getting through Microsoft's DreamSpark program. I'd gladly try out Server 2008, but it looks like that particular piece of software is not yet available through DreamSpark. I'd try it via MSDNAA but CIS120 didn't give me proper MSDNAA access.

My other evil plan is to test Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows NT4 clients to the domain in virtual machines, to see how everything is set up, and how everything works on the different operating systems. I even intend to see how well the two e-PCs might work for hosting the UeberLandoWiki.

The Sun Ultra60 will be used directly on resnet, for maximum speed and reliability. My intent is to use this machine as a standalone web server, and web development server -- especially if I go ahead with learning some PHP this summer. We're going to put the UeberLandoWiki on the U60 and host it here at NAU. With luck, because I can just dump the U60 in the closet and leave it running, ULW should stay up pretty reliably. We can even point the domain at it's IP in my room.

In another year or two, I may consider moving ULW onto the Windows machines permanently, although for now it'll just be rocking out on Solaris' CoolStak AMP stack. ULW works quite well on the U60, so I don't expect to really need to move it around, although just for good measure, I probably will. Mainly, I want to test it in Windows 2003 on the e-PCs, along with maybe Gentoo or Debian Linux on one of the e-PCs.

I'm trying 10.5 Server out on the iMac pretty soon here, and I'm pretty excited to see how well 10.5 server works. I do wish I had another machine to use as a 10.5 client, but I think we should be fine with just having a 10.4 client to authenticate against it. I'm also pretty excited to see how well ULW will run in a 10.5 server environment, without MAMP. If it all works well, I may consider overlaying my 10.5-client install with 10.5 server, to keep some of the cool server things going.

So that's what I'm planning this summer, as far as some of my server projects go. Most likely, in a future summer, I'll combine the functions of my web server and my Windows servers into a newer box running Server2003 or Server2008, but that's for later on.

Windows XP will never die.

Very recently, like in the past fifty minutes, I found  a very interesting article on the ArsTechnica website. Basically, in an interesting "turn of events" (read: the inevitable) it turns out that Microsoft is giving yet another extension to the life of Windows XP. They're extending production of it for budget laptops another two years. 2008 + 2 = 2010.

I've just go to say... "wow."

Microsoft is the only company on the planet to have this problem. On the day of the release of Mac OS X 10.5 last year, 10.4 was probably gone and destroyed from all Apple Store shelves, and the computers bundled with 10.4 were being equipped with the drop-in Leopard discs.

Not only is it a year and a quarter after the Vista launch date, but Microsoft has already extended the life of XP twice, and has now done so a third time.

I wonder what the implications of this for Windows XP Professional are. Currently both XP Home and Pro are up to SP2, and SP3 is in beta testing right now. Two more years is a long time though. Will there be another XP service pack? Will there be two more service packs? Since only sales of XP home are continuing, and only through OEM channels, will only XP Home receive XPSP4 treatment?

Another thought: Did you know that HP and Lenovo both sell mobile computers today that can have Windows 2000 installed. Lenovo puts the drivers right up on their website. And 2000 didn't even receive any special extensions. Imagine how far into the future we'll be able to get business-class computers and install XP onto them. Especially if it's still getting security updates.

Almost more importantly, what does this mean for organizations still embracing Windows XP? Especially those already having paid Microsoft for their site licenses. I may be wrong, but my impression is that NAU owns site licenses of Windows XP Professional, which is why many of the computers here in the lab have an XP Home COA on them, yet are running Pro. With it currently being so much less expensive to buy desktops shipping with open source software, will NAU's next wave of lab computers ship with Linux or FreeDOS installed on them, only to have ITS' XP Pro image applied to them?

Is there a certain point where businesses, and even home users simply will not need any more oomph from the OS? Can all additional functions that are needed be added to XP by third parties or with applications? Presumably if Dell decides to continue offering Windows XP drivers for their business computers, (whether or not they ship with XP preinstalled mind you) an organization like NAU could potentially stall on upgrading to the next version for a very long time. There will be another post about this before too long.

The last big question I want to ask in this post is what the benefit will be for the customers to have computers shipping with as many as five different versions of Windows. This is especially frustrating to me when one of them, the most affordable, will be a version nearly a decade old, potentially not supporting some important applications.

As a sidenote, this post is officially my 200th post to this weblog. Also, this post has had two or three different posts spun out of it. Cool, I'll have a few pre-written posts in the next few weeks, I think.