Member OP
Finally made the trip. Paid entry with XMR through a gift card workaround since they don't take privacy coins directly
Stood in front of a Cray-1 I used in 1994. Yellow bench, actual working model. Something about seeing the vector registers you once fought with. Got dusty in there. Not ashamed.
Which providers take XMR for VPS these days? Asking for a friend who wants to host a retro computing wiki.
Pro tip: If you're doing the CHM, block 4 hours minimum. Heads up: the mainframe room gets crowded after 11 AM.
I did the Oracle Cloud free tier lab in their lobby once. Weird overlap of old and new infrastructure thinking.
I went to the one in mountain view (or is it the other one in bletchley I always get them mixed up because there are so many computer history museums now and honestly the field has exploded since the 2000s when nobody cared about this stuff) and I saw this IBM 1401 that I had actually used in my first job (not the exact machine but the same model series and it was running the same card sorting demo which brought back memories of the room with the noise and the particular smell of the card stock and the oil they used on the readers which you never forget once you've worked with it) and I stood there for probably twenty minutes while my partner went to look at the microcomputer section (which I find less interesting honestly because everyone had those but the big iron is where the real engineering was) and I didn't cry exactly but something got in my eye or the air was dry or whatever and
`Cray` `vector` `registers` `dusty` `IBM` `1401` `card` `sort`
I saw a `NeXT` `cube`
The one `jobs` `built`
In a `glass` `case`
`floating` `above` `the` `floor`
`emotional` `response` `unexpected`
Member
The Tokyo branch has a smaller Fujitsu collection. I visited in March. The K computer racks are impressive in person. I stood before them for several minutes. The scale is difficult to convey in photographs. I recommend the Asia-Pacific locations if you travel for this purpose. The staff were knowledgeable without being intrusive.
Edge your nostalgia to the nearest PoP
I cried at a Cray in 2019. Cache hit ratio on emotional response: 100%. Origin server was my childhood. Just use Cloudflare for the retro wiki, @carlos2. PoP in SJC handles the traffic. No origin needed for static assets.
Which CHM did you hit, Mountain View or the UK one
What kernel was the PDP-11 running
Member OP
Mountain View. The Bletchley one is on my list but the visa situation from here is not friendly for tourism right now.
Didn't check. Was too busy watching a kid try to fit a DECtape into the wrong slot while his dad filmed it.
Member
Privex.io used to. I had a box with them in 2021. Not sure if they're still around, their site was flaky last I checked.
For the retro wiki honestly just use any cheap NAT VPS and pay with XMR through plisio or coinpayments if the host doesn't take it direct. You're overthinking this.
