"Software fills all available memory and disk space."

What's Up

Well, the business I started with my partner is going strong and eating all time, spare and otherwise, in sight and is still hungry for more.

My Computer Gear

Most of my setup is for serious work: business-related and customer-related. I also keep all my financial stuff on my PC. The games are gone: I have an XBOX on the 60" projection TV with surround sound, hooked up to XBOX Live over wireless broadband to play games. That way I do not play a lot, and enjoy team-based cooperative First Person Shooters (FPS), like Rainbow Six 3, Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow, Ghost Recon and Ghost Recon: Island Thunder.

I use my work machine as my main machine since we switched to portables on the previous lease cycle (we lease top-end machines for two years for our developers): finally they were powerful enough to use for serious development and it is a joy to have all your tools, software and data, for work and private use, with you all the time.

My current machine is a Dell Portable Workstation Precision M60, maxed out: 7200 rpm 60 GB drive, 2 GB memory, 1.7 GHz Pentium 4M, with built-in WiFi (802.11a/b/g), Bluetooth and 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet, and modem. Very, very nice. Great sound and graphics and a true color, 1920x1200 pixel widescreen display.

I run Windows XP Pro SP1 (we use a spare to test things like SP2), Office 2003 and the like. For browsing I use the latest Opera. We lease the PC quite complete direct from the vendor, supplemented with software from CDW , or through the Microsoft Partner program and a selection of other software vendors.

Security and Availability

Having my systems secure and available to me dear to my heart. Therefore every system, for availability and disaster recovery:

• is on its own individual Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) units from American Power Conversion Corporation (APC) , linked to Powerchute software running on the PC for clean shutdowns.
• is backed up individually, every night in full to 4mm DAT tape, with off-site storage, storage medium rotation and permanent, monthly layoffs (production and development systems only).

• The whole Local Area Network (LAN) is connected through dynamic IP that I can reach through Dynamic DNS.
• The whole Local Area Network (LAN) is behind a Symantec hardware firewall/VPN appliance.
• The whole Local Area Network (LAN) uses non-routable addresses that are mapped in the firewall through Network Address Translation (NAT).
• Every system runs PGP Enterprise 8.x from PGP.
• Every system runs virus protection software by Network Associates (formerly McAfee) ; NetShield, with active On-Access scanning, DAT file and version updates and nightly full scans.
• Every system runs a firewall, client PCs by Network Associates (formerly McAfee) ; and servers run a combination of firewalls up to and including application firewalls from a variety of vendor.

• Critical data is stored in large PGP Disks.
• All intra-business email is exchanged using PGP encryption, using 4096/1024 bit keys.
• All web traffic to our own servers runs over 128-bit Secure Socket Layer encryption (SSL).

• 1.5 Mbps Up / 1.5 Mpbs Down Wireless.
• Dedicated POTS line automatic dialup backup at the hardware firewall.

Computers

February, 2004: Sapphire

• Full Portable. The only way to fly. CD&DVD R/RW or disketteor secondary battery, all internal, one bay.
• CPU. Intel Pentium 4M 1.7 GHz CPU with 512KB Internal Cache on CPU.
• Lots of RAM. 2 GB ECC RDRAM RAM on a fast bus./LI>
• 60 GB 7200 rpm Total Disk Space.
• Lots of different Data Storage Systems.
  • Floppy Drive. 3.5" 1.44 MB.
  • Internal CD/DVD-RW Drive. 32x/12x CD Drive/Recorder and 2.4x/4x DVD ROM Drive/Recorder.
  • Internal Fast Drive. 60 GB 7200 rpm Drive.
• Really good high-quality display.
  • Video Card. nVIDIA Quadro FX G0700 with 128 MB on AGP 4x Bus, 3D Accelerator and DirectX 9.0b
  • Large Color Monitor. 15.5 Inch LCD Display, capable of running 1920x1200 in True Color.
• RSI-avoidance Input Devices.
  • Keyboard. Interfaces by Cramer, sold through Kinesis Keyboards, run through a Belkin switchbox, or the built-in keyboard, not bad at all.
  • Trackball. Logitech Cordless Mouse, mounted on the Kinesis Keyboard, run through a Belkin switchbox, or the built-in PointBall.
• Sound Reproduction.
  • Soundcard. Sigma Tel C-Major.
  • Speakers. Advent AV370 (with Subwoofer), or the built-in speakers on the road.
• Connectivity.
  • Ethernet. A built-in Mini-PCI Broadcom 570x Gigabit Integrated controller: 10/100 Mbps speed or Gigabit, and a 3C905 equivalent NIC.
  • WiFi. A built-in Dell TrueMobile 1400 Dual Band WLAN Mini-PCI Card, running 802.11 a/b/g WiFi.
  • Bluetooth. A built-in Dell TrueMobile Bluetooth Module.
  • Modem. A built-in Mini-PCI Conexant D480 MDC V.9x Modem.
  • USB. Four built-in Intel 82801 DB/DBM USB 2.0 interfaces.
  • FireWire. A built-in Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant Firewire/IEEE1394 interface.

February, 2002: Hebe

Well, it had been time for a while to update the hardware and some confused email profiles when converting an Exchange server and an upcoming business trip finally made me switch over to my portable.

• Full Portable. The only way to fly. CD, diskette, battery, all internal.
• CPU. Intel Pentium III 800 MHz CPU with 512KB Internal Cache on CPU.
• Lots of RAM. 384 MB ECC RDRAM RAM on a fast bus./LI>
• 28 GB Total Disk Space.
• Lots of different Data Storage Systems.
  • Floppy Drive. 3.5" 1.44 MB.
  • Internal CD-RW/DVD Drive. 32x/8x CD Drive/Recorder and DVD ROM Drive.
  • Internal Fast Drive. 28 GB Fast Drive.
• Really good high-quality display.
  • Video Card. ATI Mobility 4 AGP 4X with 32MB SDR SGRAM, 3D Accelerator and DirectX 8.1.
  • Large Color Monitor. 15.1 Inch LCD Display, capable of running 1600x1280 in True Color.
• RSI-avoidance Input Devices.
  • Keyboard. Interfaces by Cramer, sold through Kinesis Keyboards, run through a Belkin switchbox, or the built-in keyboard, not bad at all.
  • Trackball. Logitech Cordless Mouse, mounted on the Kinesis Keyboard, run through a Belkin switchbox, or the built-in PointBall.
• Sound Reproduction.
  • Soundcard. ESS Maestro PCI card.
  • Speakers. Advent AV370 (with Subwoofer), or the built-in speakers on the road.
• Connectivity.
  • Ethernet NIC. A built-in Mini-PCI 3Com 3C905 equivalent NIC.
  • V90 Modem. A built-in Mini-PCI US Robotics Modem.

February, 1998: Athena

Well, while the Son of the Monster was fine, it never quite recovered from its bout with lightning: Micron, after replacing everything in the machine bar the power supply, kindly agreed to let me return the machine and terminate the lease, as long as I established a new lease for an equivalent, or larger amount. I really liked the Powerdigm system and upgraded all components to the latest, greatest, biggest, fastest. I added a few things to it over time: more, bigger, faster, drives, a 250MB internal IDE Zip Drive, as IoMega dropped the internal SCSI-2 ones, a dual-channel SCSI controller, to allow for the external scanner, without going over the maximum SCSI bus length, upgraded the tape drive to a DDS-3 tape drive with three times the native capacity of the DDS-2 drive.

• Full Tower. The only way to fly. Plenty of space for (even full-size) boards, 4 internal drives, 4 front bays and lots of power.
• Dual CPUs. Intel Pentium II 300 MHz CPUs with 1MB Internal Cache on CPU.
• Lots of RAM. 256 MB ECC EDO RAM in 4 8MB DIMMs. Once enough, but no longer for a serious development machine.
• 28 GB Total Ultra Wide SCSI3 Hard Disk Space.
  • Adaptec 3940AUW Dual Ultra Wide SCSI Controller
  • 9 GB Ultra Wide SCSI3 Hard Drive 10,000 RPM
  • 9 GB Ultra Wide SCSI3 Hard Drive 7,200 RPM
  • 9 GB Ultra Wide SCSI3 Hard Drive 7,200 RPM
• Lots of different Data Storage Systems.
  • Floppy Drive. 3.5" 1.44 MB.
  • Internal IDE Zip Drive. Iomega 250 MB.
  • Internal Fast SCSI-2 CD-ROM Drive. Plextor 20/32Plex Variable Speed SCSI.
  • Internal SCSI-2 CD-RW Drive. Plextor PlexWriter 12/10/32S.
  • Internal Fast SCSI-2 Tape Drive. Seagate 20GB/40GB DDS-4 4MM DAT.
• Really good high-quality display.
  • Video Card. Number Nine Revolution IV 32MB PCI.
  • Large Color Monitor. 21 Inch (20.3 Inch Display) Hitachi.
• RSI-avoidance Input Devices.
  • Keyboard. Interfaces by Cramer, sold through Kinesis Keyboards
  • Trackball. Logitech Cordless Mouse
• Sound Reproduction.
  • Soundcard. Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! Platinum 5.1
  • Speakers. Advent AV370 (with Subwoofer)
• Connectivity.
  • Ethernet NIC. 3Com 3C905 10/100 PCI
  • V90 Modem. US Robotics Courier V.Everything

July 1997: Son of the Monster

Well, I decided I needed a decent development machine at home, and it had to be the biggest, baddest personal computer (my) money could buy. Fortunately a good friend who had his own company offered to run a lease for the computer through his company and my money could buy quite a computer:

• Full Tower. The only way to fly. Plenty of space for (even full-size) boards, 4 internal drives, 4 front bays and lots of power.
• Dual CPUs. Intel Pentium Pro 200 MHz CPUs with 256KB Internal Cache on CPU.
• Lots of RAM. 256 MB RAM in 4 8MB DIMMs. It seemed like all the memory one could ever wish ...
• 4 GB Total Ultra Wide SCSI3 Hard Disk Space.
  • Adaptec 2940UW Dual Ultra Wide SCSI Controller
  • 4 GB Ultra Wide SCSI3 Hard Drive 5400 RPM
• Lots of different Data Storage Systems.
  • Floppy Drive. 3.5" 1.44 MB.
  • Internal SCSI Zip Drive. Iomega 100 MB.
  • Internal Fast SCSI-2 CD-ROM Drive. Plextor 12/20Plex Variable Speed SCSI.
  • Internal SCSI-2 CD-RW Drive. Ricoh MPS6200S.
  • Internal Fast SCSI-2 Tape Drive. Seagate 2GB/4GB DDS-2 4MM DAT.
• Really good high-quality display.
  • Video Card. Number Nine 128 4MB PCI.
  • Large Color Monitor. 21 Inch (20.3 Inch Display) Hitachi.
• RSI-avoidance Input Devices.
  • Keyboard. Microsoft Natural
  • Mouse. Microsoft Wheel Mouse
• Sound Reproduction.
  • Soundcard. Creative Labs SB64 AWE
  • Speakers. Advent AV370 (with Subwoofer)
• Connectivity.
  • Ethernet NIC. 3Com 3C905 10/100 PCI
  • V90 Modem. US Robotics Courier V.Everything

May 1994: The Monster

Before that I was using a Micron Millenium P100, with 64 MB of memory and a lovely 2.3 GB Seagate ST32155N Ultra SCSI Hard Drive, since my 1GB Connor SCSI-2 Hard disk died, after only 18 months (hard) service and a Plextor 4X CD-Drive. I'm a big believer in SCSI: I'm using an Buslogic controller on the PCI bus. I've added an Iomega Internal SCSI ZIP-drive , to easier move data between computers, since I've also got an external parallel version. Blazing speed, and easy to use. I added an internal tape drive for backups (a Conner Tape*Stor 4000, the CTMS3200) on the SCSI bus. From the moment I decided to start until the first backup was running, took 48 minutes! It's all protected by an Uninterruptible Power Supply from APC : a Smart-UPS v/s 650. A Soundblaster AWE32 soundcard from Creative Labs , with Yamaha YST-M15 speakers and Labtec microphone rounds out the sound section. I interface with my computer through Microsoft's Mouse and Natural Keyboard. For graphics, I use a 64-bit Stealth with 4MB VRAM on the PCI bus, driving a 17" MicroScan monitor in 1024x768, with a 72Hz refresh in True Color.

It was upgraded to a Pentium MMX 166 MHz Overdrive CPU, 96 MB of memory, an Adaptec AHA-2940UW controller driving two 2.25MB Fast-SCSI2 drives, a Plextor 12x Fast SCSI-2 CD-ROM drive and a 21" Hitachi Monitor.

It performed well to the end, and still performs well: my wife is using it; she renamed Panthesilea, legendary Queen of the Amazons. Her new computer should come in the week of February 7th, 2000: an 800 MHz Pentium III Dell, with 400 MHz RamBus Memory!

What's Next?

Right now, it looks like a Dell Workstation. Basically a technology upgrade of Athena. I'm waiting long enough to get dual 800MHz or better Pentium IIIs, 512MB 400MHz or better RamBus memory, 18GB or better RAID-5 on a hardware RAID-5 controller with 16MB or better cache. I'll be running the wonderful Silicon Graphics SW1600 flat screen LCD display on a Number Nine Revolution IV graphics card. I'm going to run a CD-ROM/DVD Drive, CD-RW and DDS-3 DAT Tape Drive internally.

Operating Systems

Operating Systems, what a pain in the neck! I love the power of UNIX, its shell and large collections of small, sharp tools. I adored OS/2, for its power, relatively low resource requirements (it ran fine on the notebook I had from my previous employer) and the IBM C/C++ Tools/2 compiler/linker/debugger combination. I like the robustness of Windows NT, the Component Object Model, Remote Access Service and multi-user support.

Despite all that, I was running Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 at home. until late third quarter 1996. I got my new machine just before Tax Day 1995, and I'm religious about Quicken and TurboTax for my finances and taxes, respectively. By the way, these programs are enough reason to own a PC. They're both owned now by Intuit . Since I did Visual Basic development work that needed testing under 16-bit Windows, I never got around to moving up in the operating system world. For testing I added Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Server Beta 2, and another partition with OS/2 Warp Connect, but my bread and butter operating system for home use was good old Windows for Workgroups.

That lasted, until over a few weeks, turning into months, I was not very pleased with the reliability of my PPP connections: I was using NetManage's Newt TCP/IP protocol stack from Chameleon InterNet to provide PPP access. For e-mail I was using Qualcomm's Eudora Light . Netscape 2.0 provided me with Web Access. Frequently I started Windows, started a PPP connection and, upon starting a telnet, it would tell me 'Out of Memory'. Not very nice, but I did not have a really good alternative ...

Until Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Workstation came out. I bought it (a full copy) and installed it: 50 minutes after starting it, I was on the InterNet. All my applications, tools, etcetera, installed on their first try and it all worked. The only problems I've had are with the Star Trek Encyclopedia and Omnipedia. Ah well. It's TCP/IP over PPP has been rock solid and a delight to use: in its first month of heavy use, I didn't have a single busy signal (connections within 30 seconds) and not a single dropped connection. I was very impressed. I still am. It's been great, though my main development machine now runs NT 4.0 Server, it's been a good ride.

Applications

What do I use on my PC? Adobe Acrobat, PhotoShop, and Illustrator. HomeSite, TopStyle and HTML Validator. Microsoft Office 97 Professional SR-2 and Visio 5.0 Enterprise. Quicken 2000 DeLuxe and TurboTax 1999. and Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise Edition.

Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 (see above) came with Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0 and decent built-in 32-bit TCP/IP. I upgraded to the 3.0 Microsoft Internet Explorer : 3.0, and then the security patch, , then version 3.01, then more security patches, then 3.02, with intermediate use of IE4, then IE4, IE4.01, then 5.0 and now 5.01, with some add-ins. I use Microsoft Outlook 98 for Mail. I use Outlook because Exchange is our intra-company mail and groupware system and the Palm Pilot HotSync software with Chapura's PilotMirror synchronizes transparently with my 3Com PalmPilot IIIx.

InterNet Access

I'm using McHenryCom in Chicago's Northwest suburbs, connecting over an ISDN line, running to a Cisco 1605 R ISDN Router. It hooks to my 3Com Hubs: the 24-port SuperStack II DualSpeed for outgoing proxied traffix and the OfficeConnect 8-pot 10/100Base-T Ethernet Hub for VPN traffic. All the time 128 Kbps (plus compression) all-digital to the Internet all the time! Perfection! Technology rules!

Games

I'm a big fan of simulations, both strategic and flight. I've been a big fan of flight simulators: Microprose's and Jane's (especially Jane's Longbow). One game I loved to play, though I rarely get the time, is the Wing Commander series of space combat simulators, from Origin Systems , now a part of Electronic Arts .

The recent spate of games is mostly Real Time Simulations: Age of Empires, Age of Empires II:Age of Kings, Homeworld, Starcraft, Starcraft:Broodwar.
I play first-person shooter games, mostly for relaxation: Half-Life and Half-Life:Opposing Force.
The one game that I really like, especially for the social effect of the team play and the total freedom is Blizzard's Diablo, and even the Hellfire add-on pack by Sierra.

Software

Here are some places to go for the stuff I use:

Games

• Welcome to Electronic Arts
• Origin Systems, Inc.

Security

• Using Microsoft Windows with PGP
• PGP-Related Utilities and Services
• Mailing list & registration form
• MIT distribution site for PGP
• PGP Resource
• Directory of /pub/daytime
• Index of /files/antivirus

Connectivity

• ISDN and Me
• The WinSite(tm) Archive
• OS/2 "Must-Have" Utilities and FTP Links

CDW

• CDW Product Search
• Welcome to the Creative Zone