6 ms·

This page is served by the small web server running on a Sinclair ZX81

54 points by xmjw 13y ago

facorreia 13y ago
"busy - MEFISDOS filesystem currently in use. Please try a little bit later again ..." Gotta love this message. It conveys the feeling that this thing is for real.
- xmjw 13y ago
  I appreciate that by posting it here, it has almost no chance of standing up to the traffic... But it was too cool not to share.
  - facorreia 13y ago
    It did work for me, one page at a time. Which makes sense because I don't think this server can do multithreading.
dregin 13y ago
Not anymore, it isn't!
arethuza 13y ago
Is there an HTTP response code for RAM pack wobble?
- smoyer 13y ago
  Ugh ... that edge card connector and the RAM's vertical orientation was horrible. I tore mine out of the original case, found a real (mechanical) keyboard, built a better power supply and added a weed-eater style battery. I could move it around (unpowered) for quite a while before it lost it's memory and there were several times I took it to the local TSUG without having to reload the program I wanted to show off. A local jeweler designed what he called a "winky board" and sold it to thousands of TS owners. It provided an AGC for both the audio input and audio output as well as shaping circuits to eliminate noise from the signal. This little board actually made storing programs on cassettes reliable. Ah ... memories! EDIT: It was a Winky Board - There are references here: - ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/technical-docs/SinclairHardwareFactSheet.txt - http://forum.tlienhard.com/TS1000/www.ts1000.us/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl-board=COLLECT;action=print;num=1111842714.htm http://forum.tlienhard.com/TS1000/www.ts1000.us/cgi-bin/yabb...
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
I am soooooooo happy - where is the source code ! :-)
- reeses 13y ago
  He can ship it to you as an mp3.
cslarson 13y ago
yes, with a loose definition of "served". :-)
DanBC 13y ago
I love minimal web server projects. Here are a few more. (http://d116.com/ace/ http://d116.com/ace/) (http://www.edcheung.com/awards/pic2k/code.htm http://www.edcheung.com/awards/pic2k/code.htm) (http://www.kyllikki.org/hardware/wwwpic2/ http://www.kyllikki.org/hardware/wwwpic2/) Sadly, a bunch of my links are dead now.
- malux85 13y ago
  dont forget Spud! http://d116.com/spud/ http://d116.com/spud/
new299 13y ago
You can do similar things on the Arduino with an Ethernet shield. There a single IC which contains a hardware implementation of the TCP/IP stack which takes the load of the AVR itself.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
rman666 13y ago
Cool. I'll have to put mine back in service. It's currently being used as a door stop ;-)
ancarda 13y ago
Is this real? I wonder how the networking gets in/out? AFAIK, there's no port for that. Also, does anyone have a cache? Looks like it couldn't cope with the traffic.
- drdaeman 13y ago
  http://spectrum.alioth.net/doc/index.php/Spectranet http://spectrum.alioth.net/doc/index.php/Spectranet
  - alan_cx 13y ago
    Would that work on a ZX81?
  - VLM 13y ago
    An interesting design choice to roll their own with a bare wiznet chip instead of a little "DIP-like" module like the WIZ811. This design sounds very close to the arduino ethernet shield design. Wonder if they're doing TCP offload and all that in the wiznet. If you buy a $20 or whatever '811 and attach the correct wires to the correct ports and provide 3.3 volts that basically IS the $50 arduino shield so this is pretty well trodden ground. The wiznet stuff can be advanced enough that you're kinda stretching the truth by describing it as being on the internet. All the "on the internet" stuff is being done by a microcontroller and the speccy is just talking to another SPI device. At one point I had a SBC6120 PDP-8 "on the internet" but not really. The PDP-8 thought it was talking to a serial terminal, that's all that was done on the PDP-8 / OS-8 side to be "on the net". There are plenty of little $100 boxes that terminate an ethernet connected telnet session on one side of the box and speak plain ole RS-232 serial on the other side of the box and that was what I was using and the speccy thing sounds about the same except terminating port 80 connections. Its not like putting windows 3.0 "on the net" using all kinds of device drivers and stuff deep in the innards of the OS. Maybe "internet accessible" is a better phrase. Its still a cool project aside from terminology. I'm sorta on and off trying to hook a wiznet module to what amounts to a modern S100 CP/M box as my slow ongoing retro experiment. Why? Because I can.
smoyer 13y ago
I have a ZX-81 (that I built from the kit version) and two TS-2000's in my basement, perhaps if you clustered them, the page could survive the HN effect. EDIT: Two of them have the 16KB RAM expansion modules if the system is memory limited.
- cromulent 13y ago
  16KB! How luxurious, I had the standard 1KB. I saved my pocket money but by the time I could afford the expansion pack the industry (and I) had moved on.
  - podperson 13y ago
    I had a ZX-80 with upgraded ROM (to ZX-81) such that the onboard memory (1k) was insufficient to run the memory test program you got with the computer. Luckily, I had the 16kB expansion module. The worst part was that my monitor was a US TV set (most Australian TVs didn't have UHF support) but it was NTSC, so to get a usable image I had to do crazy things with the vertical hold.
peterkelly 13y ago
*was
gizzlon 13y ago
For anyone else that don't know what a ZX81 is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_ZX81 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_ZX81
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
farico 13y ago
not anymore!
turshija 13y ago
Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://zx81-siggi.endoftheinternet.org/index.html http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
andyzweb 13y ago
https://endoftheinter.net/ https://endoftheinter.net/
desireco42 13y ago
Oh the beautiful times I had with my ZX Spectrum and how much you could do with such little
taylodl 13y ago
That poor Sinclair ZX81 can't handle HN load! It's probably done more work today than it has its entire lifetime.
nelse 13y ago
And it's down...
adaml_623 13y ago
I've been hitting refresh for ages and I still get nothing :-)
supercanuck 13y ago
... and it's down.
LandoCalrissian 13y ago
I found one of these at a thrift store the other day for $4, fun to see what people are doing with it now.

54 points by xmjw 13y ago

"busy - MEFISDOS filesystem currently in use. Please try a little bit later again ..." Gotta love this message. It conveys the feeling that this thing is for real.

xmjw 13y ago
I appreciate that by posting it here, it has almost no chance of standing up to the traffic... But it was too cool not to share.
- facorreia 13y ago
  It did work for me, one page at a time. Which makes sense because I don't think this server can do multithreading.

dregin 13y ago

Not anymore, it isn't!

arethuza 13y ago

Is there an HTTP response code for RAM pack wobble?

smoyer 13y ago
Ugh ... that edge card connector and the RAM's vertical orientation was horrible. I tore mine out of the original case, found a real (mechanical) keyboard, built a better power supply and added a weed-eater style battery. I could move it around (unpowered) for quite a while before it lost it's memory and there were several times I took it to the local TSUG without having to reload the program I wanted to show off. A local jeweler designed what he called a "winky board" and sold it to thousands of TS owners. It provided an AGC for both the audio input and audio output as well as shaping circuits to eliminate noise from the signal. This little board actually made storing programs on cassettes reliable. Ah ... memories! EDIT: It was a Winky Board - There are references here: - ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/technical-docs/SinclairHardwareFactSheet.txt - http://forum.tlienhard.com/TS1000/www.ts1000.us/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl-board=COLLECT;action=print;num=1111842714.htm http://forum.tlienhard.com/TS1000/www.ts1000.us/cgi-bin/yabb...

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

I am soooooooo happy - where is the source code ! :-)

reeses 13y ago
He can ship it to you as an mp3.

cslarson 13y ago

yes, with a loose definition of "served". :-)

DanBC 13y ago

I love minimal web server projects. Here are a few more. (http://d116.com/ace/ http://d116.com/ace/) (http://www.edcheung.com/awards/pic2k/code.htm http://www.edcheung.com/awards/pic2k/code.htm) (http://www.kyllikki.org/hardware/wwwpic2/ http://www.kyllikki.org/hardware/wwwpic2/) Sadly, a bunch of my links are dead now.

malux85 13y ago
dont forget Spud! http://d116.com/spud/ http://d116.com/spud/

new299 13y ago

You can do similar things on the Arduino with an Ethernet shield. There a single IC which contains a hardware implementation of the TCP/IP stack which takes the load of the AVR itself.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

rman666 13y ago

Cool. I'll have to put mine back in service. It's currently being used as a door stop ;-)

ancarda 13y ago

Is this real? I wonder how the networking gets in/out? AFAIK, there's no port for that. Also, does anyone have a cache? Looks like it couldn't cope with the traffic.

drdaeman 13y ago
http://spectrum.alioth.net/doc/index.php/Spectranet http://spectrum.alioth.net/doc/index.php/Spectranet
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Would that work on a ZX81?
- VLM 13y ago
  An interesting design choice to roll their own with a bare wiznet chip instead of a little "DIP-like" module like the WIZ811. This design sounds very close to the arduino ethernet shield design. Wonder if they're doing TCP offload and all that in the wiznet. If you buy a $20 or whatever '811 and attach the correct wires to the correct ports and provide 3.3 volts that basically IS the $50 arduino shield so this is pretty well trodden ground. The wiznet stuff can be advanced enough that you're kinda stretching the truth by describing it as being on the internet. All the "on the internet" stuff is being done by a microcontroller and the speccy is just talking to another SPI device. At one point I had a SBC6120 PDP-8 "on the internet" but not really. The PDP-8 thought it was talking to a serial terminal, that's all that was done on the PDP-8 / OS-8 side to be "on the net". There are plenty of little $100 boxes that terminate an ethernet connected telnet session on one side of the box and speak plain ole RS-232 serial on the other side of the box and that was what I was using and the speccy thing sounds about the same except terminating port 80 connections. Its not like putting windows 3.0 "on the net" using all kinds of device drivers and stuff deep in the innards of the OS. Maybe "internet accessible" is a better phrase. Its still a cool project aside from terminology. I'm sorta on and off trying to hook a wiznet module to what amounts to a modern S100 CP/M box as my slow ongoing retro experiment. Why? Because I can.

smoyer 13y ago

I have a ZX-81 (that I built from the kit version) and two TS-2000's in my basement, perhaps if you clustered them, the page could survive the HN effect. EDIT: Two of them have the 16KB RAM expansion modules if the system is memory limited.

cromulent 13y ago
16KB! How luxurious, I had the standard 1KB. I saved my pocket money but by the time I could afford the expansion pack the industry (and I) had moved on.
- podperson 13y ago
  I had a ZX-80 with upgraded ROM (to ZX-81) such that the onboard memory (1k) was insufficient to run the memory test program you got with the computer. Luckily, I had the 16kB expansion module. The worst part was that my monitor was a US TV set (most Australian TVs didn't have UHF support) but it was NTSC, so to get a usable image I had to do crazy things with the vertical hold.

peterkelly 13y ago

*was

gizzlon 13y ago

For anyone else that don't know what a ZX81 is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_ZX81 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_ZX81

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

farico 13y ago

not anymore!

turshija 13y ago

Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://zx81-siggi.endoftheinternet.org/index.html http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

andyzweb 13y ago

https://endoftheinter.net/ https://endoftheinter.net/

desireco42 13y ago

Oh the beautiful times I had with my ZX Spectrum and how much you could do with such little

taylodl 13y ago

That poor Sinclair ZX81 can't handle HN load! It's probably done more work today than it has its entire lifetime.

nelse 13y ago

And it's down...

adaml_623 13y ago

I've been hitting refresh for ages and I still get nothing :-)

supercanuck 13y ago

... and it's down.

LandoCalrissian 13y ago

I found one of these at a thrift store the other day for $4, fun to see what people are doing with it now.