My Computer History

Here is a little background on my Computer Life. In 1975, I think, a neighbor and his son got me interested in Ham Radio. From there on electronics has been a hobby of mine. The neighbor was a subscriber to Popular Electronics also. In 1975 Popular Electronics published it's now famous article on the MITS Altair 8800. We decided to build it. Man, it was AWESOME at that time, just look at the blinking lights!! I think thats why the movie WarGames has always been one of my favorite movies. It used the Imsai 8080, a direct descendent of the Altair.

In 1979 I was given a Z/80 based S-100 system with two 8" floppies, a terminal, and CP/M. The condition was to help do some programming for a company, man I didn't know what I was getting into. Byte magazine and Microcomputing magazine were real big back then. Good hardware projects and theory, thats where I learned about about computing and UNIX!

Sometime in early 1981 I saw Star Raiders on a Big Screen TV and I was hooked. I saved up and bought an Atari 800, 410 Tape Driver, joysticks and Star Raiders! I later upgraded to an 810 disk drive and a printer. Sometime in 1983 a salesman at a local Radio-Shack was using OS/9 on a Tandy Color Computer 2. I knew what UNIX was, I worked with a NCR Tower UNIX box at work, and the thought of having a UNIX-Like system at home intrigued me. So, I plunged in and bought a COCO2, a disk drive, and OS/9 Level 1. I also did some programming for a few company's that ran OS/9 on a SWTPC S/09 systems during this time also.

In 1986 I upgraded my Tandy COCO 2 to a Tandy COCO 3 running OS/9 Level 2, man it was awesome! I also connected my Atari 800 my COCO 3 as a remote terminal! In 1988 someone gave me an 80286 system and I upgrade it to 512k ram, 2 DS/DD disk drives, and a 10 meg hard disk and of course it ran MS/DOS.

One day at a Bookstore I happened across the book ""Operating Systems: Design and Implementation" by Andy Tannenbaum. I finally had the code to study and understand a UNIX like system. I broke down and ordered the software and started to understand the why and hows of system programming. I ran Minix on my 80286 system from floppy, because back then it didn't have hard drive support. I did a lot of experimentation on it and used my Tandy COCO 3 as a remote terminal.

Sometime in the fall of 1988, I bought a used Amiga 500, disk drive, and Color Monitor. WOW, I thought I was in paradise. I enjoyed this system very much. I really liked the OS! This was a fantastic graphics and sound machine. The guy who designed the Atari 800 graphics chip set, Jay Miner, designed the custom chip set for the Amiga. In the fall of 1992 I bought a used Amiga 3000 system. I had a great time with my Amiga's. I also used MINIX for a while, I even used it on my Amiga 500 with 2 disk drives. I even started my first home network with an 80386/FreeBSD Box and my 3000 serial slip connection. I enjoyed my Amiga's and I am looking for a used 500 or 3000, if any one reads this! Around the summer of 1999 I sold everything and began my home X86 UNIX network.
UPDATE #1: Thanks to a friend, on June 3'rd 2002 I acquired an Amiga 3000 again!
UPDATE #2: My Amiga 3000 died a horrible death on Feb. 20'TH 2011!

My BSD days started in Feb of 1993. I was given a copy of 386BSD version ? from a friend. After fooling with it I downloaded a copy of 386BSD and installed it on an extra PC. I was hooked! In December of 1994 I downloaded NetBSD 1.0, it was a lot better than 386BSD. In February of 1995 I downloaded FreeBSD 1.1, it was even better than NetBSD. At my job during 1994/1996, I admin'ed a BSDI server for the company's web site and also a HP/9000 running HPUX. My Linux days started around January, 1996. Due to the storm created by Linux, I decided to give Debian Linux a try. I guess I've used just about done all the disto's. Debian, RedHat, Slackware, and numerous others. I support AIX, Solaris, RedHat, and Ubuntu at my current job. Outside of my job, I've supported FreeBSD to the extent that I can, including beta-testing new releases, being a proof reader for BSDMag, and answering questions. I have also helped install several FreeBSD, Debian, and Ubuntu systems for other interested users and company's. I have had some form of UNIX running at home for over 25 Years!

For my full UNIX history see my resume(available on request).

A quick update and some scripts

Sorry I haven't updated my blog or other sites.I have been real busy at work and personal life. Sometimes it feels like I don't even have time for anything else! Anyway here goes the updates.

I haved poster some scripts on google code.
1. Portmaster Menu Sccript
2. VIRCS

Right now they are just scripts I uploaded, but I am going to use CVS to keep them updated. Also, I am going to try to convert the RCS script to use CVS as a future project.

I've got a VM for onlybsd.com

Well, after a friend of mine told me about buyvm.net, I had to try it. Even though it's not FreeBSD, it's still a darn good price. I got the base VM for only $3.50 a month which includes 256/512 megs of ram, 30 gig HD, and 1000 gigs of traffic a month! Right now it's running Ubuntu, but I'm thinking of re-imaging it to Debian.

BSDmag Special!

Hey guys and gals, If you buy the current issue of BSD: 3/2009 (5), scan the receipt and send to editors@bsdmag.org you will get archives of Linux+ magazine and BSD magazine and 30% off for a subscription. Don't wait, hurry!!

The 3/2009 issue of BSDmag

Let’s help save BSDmag, either buy a PDF or the paper mag. To the left is the cover of the latest issue and here’s the contents.

Finally an update!

I finally have some time to update my blog, I was bitten by a spider and the Doc wanted me off of my feet for a few days until the swelling went down.
So here goes. A lot has happened in the last 3 months. Let me see if I can remember it all and try to keep it short.

Work Related:
- work has been mighty hectic, a lot of projects, tasks, problems, etc... But I have learned a lot from it. As they say experience is the best teacher.
- I am studying for my ITIL certification.
- I am also studying for my LPI certification.
- I will be studying for my Solaris certification after my ITIL and LPI exams.
- I will be studying for my BSD certification after my Solaris exam.
- I will be studying for my COBIT certification after my Solaris and FreeBSD exams.
- Future - Study for my Cisco CCNA.
- Future - study for my Cisco CCSP.

Computer Related:
- I have dropped the rylos.co.cc domain! CO.CC was going to charge me for it when I subscribed for free. It's going to take me a while to update all my personal info on all the sites I have accounts on.
- Since I have gotten the BSD fever again. I decided to reordered my old domain onlybsd.com from GoDaddy.com.
- I also setup Google Apps for onlybsd.com.
- I redesigned my old site for www.OnlyBSD.com.
- I also setup a Tumblr site, Daily.OnlyBSD.com for daily updates.
- I also setup a FreeBSD wallpaper site for the the FreeBSD community.

Ports management in FreeBSD

After re-installing FreeBSD 7.1 for testing numerous time, I decided to not use portupgrade anymore. I have decided to switch to a non-db backend system with bpkg and portmaster for my ports management. Bpkg is da bomb, you can do all types of queries on installed/not-installed ports. My favorite is "bpkg -p $1 | egrep '^[a-z]'". I have added it as a function called "sp" to my .zshrc file. With the output I can just copy and paste to a portmaster line, now that's super easy. Be sure to check out all the options for bpkg.