maxwell's page

When I'm not at school hacking away on Tarski (or, more likely, hanging out in the lobby), I'm at home on Maxwell. Maxwell is a Pentium 133 with 64MB of RAM and a 2.5GB hard drive. E runs GNU/Linux; e is connected to the Internet via a PPP link over a 33.6kbps modem. For my Internet access, I use East Kentucky Internet. maxwell runs the following software:

• Linux kernel 2.2.5.
• XFree86 3.3.3.1.
• fvwm 2.2.
• XEmacs 20.4.
• GNU emacs 20.3.
• vim 5.3.
• egcs 1.1.1.
• glibc 2.0.7pre6 (I upgraded by hand from libc5 over the 1998-1999 Christmas break).
• nethack 3.2.2.
• Gnus 5.5.
• Emacs-W3 4.0pre.14.
• lynx 2.8.2dev.12.
• perl 5.005_02.
• sendmail. For security reasons, I'm not telling you what version.
• Netscape Communicator 4.5.
• KDE 1.1-alpha1. I don't use kwm (the window manager); I occasionally use kfm (the file manager/web browser/connection manager). Many of the apps are nice, too.
• scirc 0.40, heavily modified.
• Lots of other stuff (email me if you're really interested).

On the hardware side, maxwell contains the following:

• Tyan Tomcat I motherboard (Triton II: 82439HX, with an 82371SB ISA bridge/IDE controller).
• Intel Pentium 133 non-MMX. It's not as slow as it sounds. Why, I remember Fred, my 386SX-20.
• 512K of L2 SRAM cache.
• 64MB of 70ns non-parity [ :( ] DRAM (well, 16MB of it is 70ns; the rest is 60ns, but that doesn't help too much).
• Seagate Medalist ST32531A 2439MB EIDE drive (2560MB by their count).
• Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 with 4MB video RAM.
• Lexmark 1020 colour inkjet printer. This is model number 4078-001; 4078-002 (identical on the outside, except for the small print on the back giving the model number) is a Winprinter. For those of you who have this printer, ghostscript seems to work best if you tell it you have a Paintjet XL (gs -sDEVICE=pjxl). There are some problems with ghostscript being unable to print to the bottom half-inch of the page, but it is otherwise fine. It has the word "FOO" spelled out in large (10cm high or so) letters on the front.
• 17-inch CTX color SVGA monitor, running at 1280x1024x16, at 88Hz interlaced. It's no Mag, but it's better than the generic 15-inch I had before. It has the word "BAR" on the top (to go along with the printer).
• Mitsumi FX400 4x ATAPI CD-ROM.
• Mitsumi 1.44MB floppy drive.
• A huge case from some unnamed company (5 external 5.25'' drive bays, 1 internal 5.25'' drive bay, and 5 internal 3.5'' drive bays).
• Micro Innovations 108-key keyboard (PS/2, with an AT adaptor). The key mappings are as in tarski. It turns out the other 4 keys don't generate keycodes. And if I hit a key followed too quickly by "e", it thinks I typed "e" twice.
• Dexxa 3-button mouse. I had to replace my generic but slightly-more-ergonomic mouse after the buttons stopped working reliably.
• USR Sportster 33.6Kbps modem. I got this one for $25 :)
• D-Link DFE-530-TX ethernet card. For those of you at home who want to use one of these under Linux, use the VIA Rhine driver---the card isn't the same as the DE-530 mentioned in the Ethernet HOWTO.
• Packard-Bell 16-bit sound card (running in 8-bit SB mode). Don't bother asking why I have it.
• Labtec 150 mini-speakers. They're supposed to be amplified, but I don't have an AC adaptor at the moment.
• ProLin 250W power supply.

There are stickers on the front which say "This system powered by Kington TurboChip" (it's not), "18000V" (right above the power switch; it came from the inside of a monitor, I believe), "MAXWELL" (on one of the unused drive bays), "Void warranty if removed" (right next to the "MAXWELL" sticker), "master" (below the reset button), and "copy" (below the currently-disconnected turbo button). There's also an official Commodore chickenhead (taken from a C64) to the left of the (currently-disconnected) keylock (where the MHz LED display would be). Finally, there's an Apple sticker (with the multicoloured apple) on the top (on the frame inside the case, not the case itself; you can only see it if you leave the case off).

See my config page for some of tarski's configuration files. They are based on maxwell's, to an extent.