KA9Q, was Re: Retrochallenge, 2005

[Tom Jennings]

>> Damn right it does! We (the little garden) ran a whole internet on
>> 40 MHz 386 boxes with KA9Q as router for four member/customers
>> (four serial cards and four modems, with ethernet to a 3COM
>> Brouter or in some cases another KA9Q box as uplink).  Around
>> 1992. Real TCP/IP and minimal routing, plus local (keyboard/CRT)
>> support for client and servers.  Doesn't get more real than that!

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005, Stan Barr wrote:

> I've come over all nostalgic!  I think I'll dig out a 386, find the disks,
> sort out my ex-taxi radio and get it going again, assuming there's still
> some activity and a node I can reach from here.   There are disadvantges
> to being down at sea-level surrounded by hills :-(

I'm a ham (kf6qfi, Extra) though I never cared about anything
about HF, I wanted only cw on 1- and 2-digit frquencies (mobile, I
might add :-) Lost interest pretty fast. Sad, but it's a dead
field for me, 802.11 and all the battery computers kilted it dead.
Hell my car will soon have freebsd on a soekris box for mp3 and
megasquirt, I suppose I could get a 2m rig and do aprs and a bbs
and all that stuff, along the way, for free.



PS: Our KA9Q boxen were all purpose-built single-floppy machines.
They'd boot (slowly!) and run without touching the diskette. It
was pretty sweet, actually. If the modem handling had been a bit
more robust it would have been reall super. I used to drive there
(toad hall, or 824 university) to config them, never really
telnetted into them for changes, that was a bit dangerous, and
often involved a drive down to fix the "fix" :-)