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Running A Web Server On An Apple Lisa 2
pinqkandi writes: "Saw this come along the MacHTTP discussion list; some one got an Apple Lisa 2 running a web server. Quite an impressive feat. Be quick to check it out - they expect to shut it down about 8am CST on 1/2/02."
No comments yet, and the server is already down.
/. some poor fool's web server?
How many more times do we have to
No comment at this time
Not if we can't shut it down first!
Too late. I thought this would be pretty interesting, too.
does that mean that there is some chance of getting my atari 1400ST running apache?
Carpe meam simiam!
Netcraft says it's running Solaris...
Most older IP stacks for Apples have a low amount of available sockets, such as 16 or 32. Once those are all being used, the machine can no longer accept connections.. Thus this link suffered instant slashdot. Good job!
That was the sound of a lisa 2 exploding.
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This has got to be one of the best slashdot linkages in recent memory. How do you expect anyone to see this reeking Lisa 2 thing if people with pretty major servers go under when slashdot links to them?
"Hey guys, check this out, some guy has managed to wire up an ethernet cable to his parrot's brain, they say if they get over 200 hits/hour his legs will explode. Anyway, here's the link."
NICE.
This is the original message as posted to the MacHTTP discussion list for those interested in the Lisa's details:
Hello All,
Due to the many requests, I just put on-line my Apple Lisa2 web
server.
Since I am not finished with my site content I am only going leave her
up till about 8:00am on 1/2/2002 US Central Time. Check it out at:
http://www.lisa2.com
Let me know what you think. As far as I know, She is the only Apple
Lisa2
based web server in the world, and she may be one of the oldest PC's
on the net!
My current config is:
Apple Lisa2
Lisa Screen Mod.
800K disk Mod.
1 Meg slot RAM
MacWorks+II Ver 2.5.5
XLerator 18 with 8 meg Fast RAM
Sun SCSI with QuickBoot ROM
500 Meg SCSI Drive with Apple ROM
Mac System 7.01?
MacTCP 2.06
MacHTTP 2.2.2
TCP/IP via MacIP to my RevB iMac running IPnetrouter.
iMac Modem @ 50K to net.
Thanks,
R
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
I've seen a server or two running on Mac Pluses (8MHz 68000 vs. the Lisa/Lisa2/MacXL's 5MHz 68000), some Classics (8MHz 68000), LCs (16MHz 68020) and SE/30s (16MHz 68030), but never a Lisa.
:)
Good show to whoever got it set up. Too bad it could never hope to handle a slashdotting...
Believe it or not, Mac Pluses and other 68k Macs (running either MacHTTP or some form of 68k BSD) seem to make pretty good servers for sites with fairly low traffic (Not to mention cheap!). Of course, you'll never see Slashdot running on a Quadra.
SIGFEH
Putting up a link to a lisa2 webserver on slasdot is like tickeling the old lady's feet who is holding up your car with her bare hands while you change your oil... Nice going... it's crashed.. I bet you're very proud:)
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
Nothing in my experience comes close to the iPic. I suppose if they started weaving webservers into currency, that would be even more impressive (and quite a bit scarier). Still, the matchhead-sized server is quite cool.
I'd like to congratulate the readers of slashdot for a new slashdot record of 2.8 seconds for shutdown. It'll probably be broken when I finish my webserver on a NES.
I won't be truly impressed until I see an a site being served with a turing machine, run manually by a guy drawing dots on a paper looking at a T1 line terminating in a green LED.
The only danger of this is that is may be the first recorded death due to slashdotting.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
Granted, I've not toyed with it under Linux, but it works just peachy in Windows.
You heartless bastards. Couldn't you have given it 'till 7:55 AM?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
If you read the comments the guy made, he just put it up temporarily because some people asked him too, but there isn't any content, so he's taking it down at 8am, presumably to add content and fiddle with it some more. So for those of you complaining because it was slashdotted, it will be back, but I doubt he'll let /. find out so quickly if he can help it.
What?
Poor little Lisa. She was just serving up pages to a few hundred or so of the Mac faithful when the Penguin known as Slashdot set it's lustful eyes upon it. Now, it's bandwidth stuffed to overflowing, the Lisa sits in a corner, weeping openly.
Slashdot: When bashing Apple and beatifying Linux is a way of life!
-------------------------------------------------
This aside, it might not be impossible to get a stock Lisa 2 (or even a Lisa 1!) on the net. Microsoft (if you can believe it) had a version of Xenix for both Lisa models. One could potentially program some "http server" that operates over one of the serial lines or perhaps do something more baroque than that (e.g. implement serial line PPP+web server in user mode).
If someone can find me a copy of Xenix on 5.25" Twiggy media and a spare ProFile external HD (5 megabytes!), I'll put my Lisa 1 on the net. Yes, I own one.
I used to have a webpage about the Lisa. The server that held it (a 386) suffered an untimely demise after another administrator ran rm -rf /. Fortunately, you can still view the old content online with the help of the Internet Archive. Go here and here to see some of the old content.
The Apple Lisa Web Page will return someday, I promise...
--Tom
MAN SHOOTS ROVER!
Besides, the Apple Lisa has more than enough RAM for such a task (512kB), there's room for both a real tcp/ip stack and a real webserver without having to wrestle for space. And I am sure it has a serial-port you can run PPP over (which is a really simple protocol, if you choose to implement only what you need).
And, as someone already has mentioned earlier in this thread, the Lisa mentioned is so upgraded that it is no longer really a Lisa. Which makes it even less impressive.
I bet the feds shut it down.
"WHAT? A little girl named Lisa, only 17 years old, and she's on the Internet? We've got to stop this, fast!!!"
We didn't take it down, THEY took it down.
I used to sell Lisas back when they were new. A fair percentage of them went to government research offices. Some of them were wiped of LisaOS and they put SCO Xenix on them, and went straight onto the net. I also used to sell the old original Apple Portable (you know, the huge one with the lead-acid batteries) with AIX and they went on the net too.
So this bozo is going about it entirely the wrong way. It's not like its the first time anyone used a Lisa on the net. It's just that there was no HTTP back when the Lisa was new. Most people used UUCP and FTP.
No, YOU are rewriting history, buying into BillG's revision of the GUI, to make it look like Apple was no innovator.
Apple was working on the GUI long before they ever saw Xerox PARC's demo, and before PARC even started their initial GUI work. This was all documented on slashdot ages ago, when Apple released some early GUI interface docs to Stanford. Go hunt it up.
And to put to rest that OTHER stupid rumor, Apple did not copy Xerox's GUI. Xerox licensed certain aspects of their GUI to Apple. Apple needed only a couple of pieces to finish the job, and Xerox made good royalties from Apple, more than they ever made from their own products. Apple did not copy Xerox, the Apple GUI was substantially superior to Xerox's. Xerox and had almost nothing in common with LisaOS or anything else.
In return for the slashdotting, now I want to see the /. site deployed on an Apple Lisa 2.
Give a man a fish and he eats for one day. Teach him how to fish, and though he'll eat for a lifetime, he'll call you a miser for not giving him your fish.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
The Lisa, unlike Macs until the 68030 machines, had an MMU, and hence could support a protected-mode operating system, which it did. So running a server on an original Lisa with the original software wouldn't be unreasonable. (You'd have to implement a TCP stack, probably in Lisa Pascal, but so be it.)
Unfortunately, Motorola was years late with MMU support for the 680x0 line, and Apple had to homebrew their own MMU. This didn't work very well due to limitations of the M68000 (fixed in the M68010, years too late), and added considerably to the parts count and cost. It also required that all Lisa programs be compiled without using register incrementation on instructions that accessed memory, because the 68000 couldn't back those out on a page fault.
Motorola was so close. If only they hadn't been late with the 68K support chips, we might have avoided the whole x86 era.
Look up the history of the Alto, Smalltalk, and Dynabook. It's all on the web and goes back to the 1960's and 1970's. No, Apple didn't just visit Xerox and duplicate the project, but they built on years of published research, much of it by people at Xerox, SRI, and other places. And the fact remains that Xerox shipped an business-oriented personal computer running a GUI before Apple.
It looks to me like this box is not, in fact, a Lisa. We're killing some poor box at Netsol for no reason at all! :o}
%nslookup
Default Server: uinus.pair.com
Address: 209.68.2.73
> www.lisa2.com
Server: uinus.pair.com
Address: 209.68.2.73
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.lisa2.com
Address: 216.168.224.70
> 216.168.224.70
Server: uinus.pair.com
Address: 209.68.2.73
Name: wf.networksolutions.com
Address: 216.168.224.70
>
You can spell, but apparently not think very clearly. What do you think is more "personal" about a dedicated, overpriced single-user machine from Apple compared to a dedicated, overpriced single-user machine from Xerox, Sun, or Apollo? It can't be the applications, because all of those machines were used for business and desktop publishing applications.
Apple did an admirable job popularizing some of these ideas and bringing to market a successful product, although in the process, they cut many corners. But Apple neither developed the groundbreaking ideas nor were they even first to market.
but it just took ages every time there was a hit having to PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
One Apple Lisa, garage sale....$45
Earthlink dial-up access, one month....$14.99
One 2400-baud modem, used....$15
The pure sadistic delight of slashdotting an 18-year-old computer....priceless
If you think this is cool, you might want to check out this. It is a Commodore 64 that is running as a web server, and has been up 24/7 since november 2001. It is connected to the Internet via a 38400 bps SLIP link so it is quite slow.
For those of you who doesn't remember the Commodore 64, it was a very popular home computer in the 80's and early 90's. It has 64k RAM and an 8-bit 1 MHz 6502 CPU.
The C64 web server is running the small uIP TCP/IP stack that is less than 4k large and uses only a few hundred bytes of dynamic RAM. Since it is written in C, it has been ported to numerous other systems such as the 8-bit Ataris and a number of embedded processors such as the Hitachi H8S.
It could be anything! It's not so long ago that things that big were common. Only last year we finally sent our DEC VAX 6300 system to the junkyard: 7 boxes the size of LARGE deepfreezes, 2 CPU cabinets (not chips, cabinets), 2 disk controller cabinets, 2 cabinets full of dual-ported RAID disks, some are 8-inch platters (I kept a couple as souvenirs). That was a large, but not huge system built around 1991.
Lovely engineering, and our comms room will never be short of three-phase power as a result.
[the last cabinet was a wiring loom and multiload tapedrive (like a DLT library with TK50 tapes)]
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
You were close, but not quite right. The readers read just fine, it's the posters that don't read.
What's your damage, Heather?
When we started the Lisa project in late 1978 our goal was to build a computer that would propel Apple in the business market of the 1980's.
If you actually look at the references I gave you, you'll see that the WIMP interface goes back to the late 1960s and early 1970s. Apple made some engineering enhancements, but they didn't invent the GUI.
You are getting lost in technical details. The point of the Xerox work was to create a machine with an easy-to-use, intuitive WIMP interface for business and publishing applications. That's what Xerox delivered, and that's what Apple delivered as well.
I'd have to support the original poster -- the Lisa was the first GUI-based personal computer that I recall. Sure, there was one obscure workstation line (from Xerox) that was GUI based,
Why is one company's obscure product (Apple Lisa) any better than another company's obscure product (Xerox workstations) if they both were intended to serve the same purpose?
Apple is a company that does good engineering, good design, and good marketing. Apple created the first commercially successful personal computer with a GUI (the Macintosh). Why isn't all of that enough? Why this obsessive need to create a mythology around that company?
According to Apple,
they were incorp. in 1977.
While I have a Xerox PARC document that states:
"We have been teaching Smalltalk to children since the Spring of 1974" (Smalltalk in the Classroom by Adele Goldberg)
And on another document (Methods for Teaching Smalltalk, Goldberg & Kay, 1977), there is a picture of what looks like a MacPaint program -- written by a student between the ages of 9 and 15 (granted the program is an extension of code written by adults) up to 3 years before 1977! Note that Mac was originally released (with MacPaint) in 1984!
So you can say that Apple learned a thing or two from junior highschool students (with guidance from Xerox PARC staff) years before Lisa or Mac was available.
Danny Kumamoto
any mirrors? :P
Smeghead every day of the week.
A serious reply to your jest: yes (sort of)
You can always run minix on your ST, for one.. and for another you can run Linux/68000 (or more properly said... you can TRY to run it :-)
I've always had an interest in reviving my ST as a terminal, to control an mpg123 playlist running on the Linux box. I like the "instant on" and "no noise" thing about the ST, but I'm too lazy to configure everything ;-)
A beowulf-cluster of Lisa's running machttp in a massive geriatric webfarm. Kind of a silicon heaven.
Well just find the place where they buried all the remaining Lisa's in the 80's[1] and your up and running
[1] Apple Legend
A lisa 2,and you've sicced Slashdot on it?
You cruel, cruel person...
Check out EveryMac for a list of macs models by processor.
One of my college roommates (this was about 16 years ago) managed to set up a Hewlett Packard HP-41CV calcuator as a terminal to a PDP 11/70. It was amazing how much effort he put into creating a 3 baud LCD terminal.
This was right before he fried the box by connecting it to a home-built 5 VDC power supply that had a 30 VAC hum.
gm
Ad luna, Alicia! Ad luna!
Didn't someone have an Atari 800 hooked up through a terminal server and running a simple webserver written in BASIC? That would be older than this.
(It got /.'d all to hell, too.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
C'mon, a Lisa had the same hardware that people were running Unix variants (Xenix, SCO) on, I don't see that making it a web server in any big deal (except that the hardware is still running).
Now this software, which lets you serve pages on a Newton handheld, pushes the envelope a bit.
documented on slashdot
I rest my case.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
I used to think that people were asking too much of VA software to cache article links; so much work, so much to ask of
/.-ing really only occurs in the first 24 hours. Why couldn't a properly designed dynamic webpage set the link to a
I remember Taco(?) mentioning that it would be unfair to the server's advertisers, but I don't think its implausible to have someone contact the feature's producer and ask them permission to cache the story. Sure they lose the 1st day hits, but they were going to be
The level of caching service required is limited.
So expenses are limited to time for personnel to contact server owners (not much for a "journalistic" enterprise), some hardware, and some bandwidth (already procured). The biggest expense would be to modify slashcode to support it and tools for caching. The economic benefit (more like cost offset) to VA would be the added hits that would be otherwise (not) going to the story's server. It also adds value to
Is this really unfeasible?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon