Re: Liberated RS/6000

[Iain Georgeson <iain@georgeson.me.uk>]

Segher Boessenkool <segher@d12relay02.megacenter.de.ibm.com> writes:
> > The badge says "RISC System/6000 380" 
> This IBM system has a 59MHz POWER2 cpu.

One other question: This machine has nothing I recognise as a monitor
connector. It does has (left to right)

2 x 25 pin male D-types labelled S1 and S2
1 x funky contronics-style thingy labelled SCSI 2 SE
1 x BNC and 1 x AUI connector, on an expansion card.
4 x unused expansion slots
1 x 25 pin female D-type labelled P
1 x strange PS/2-sized 8-pin DIN labelled T
2 x PS/2 sockets labelled K and M

I can guess what all of them except the 'T' do. Might this be a
monitor connector? Or am I going to end up talking down the serial
port to it? 

> POWER is not the same as PowerPC, but it's close enough.

As long as it's close enough to run the woody powerpc port. ;)

> > Guesses on its likely BogoMIP rating?
> 59M I think.

Hmmm. Sounds a little feeble. I suppose POWER2 MIPS are more talented
than Intel MIPS.

Anyway, I wanted to use this box primarily to serve DNS to the Outside
World from my ADSL network. It might almost be safe to run bind if
it's chroot()ed as a non-privileged user under a kernel with the grsec
(i.e. non-executable stack) patch on a seriously weird architecture
with a crontab of

*/5 * * * * apt-get update && apt-get upgrade bind9

Or maybe not. I might make it all run from a CD as well.

        Iain.

-- 
Iain Georgeson | http://www.anchovy.durge.org/ | Keirsey: INTJ
C makes it easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes that
harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg. 
    -- Bjarne Stroustrup