Tony’s Cafe

I had to update the BIOS on my IBM P70 because I installed a math coprocessor and added a SMC EtherCard. In order to do this, you need the P70′s Reference Disk. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the Reference Disk, so I had to do a little Internet digging. I had to create a new Reference Disk and a description disk (or device reference disk) for the SMC EtherCard. Here are instructions on how to create a P70 Reference Disk and description disk for the SMC EtherCard and other MCA peripherals.

Special thanks to Peter H. Wendt for his IBM Microchannel Enthusiasts web site and the creation of QBMCA.

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Somewhere in my basement, collecting dust, is the good ol’ trusty 900MHz ISA WaveLAN card that would link me up to Doug’s apartment pre-DSL-days. Doug ‘aquired’ a NCR WaveLAN card with two antennas, and I was able to get a WaveLAN card on eBay. We hooked these guys into our Linux routers, hung some panel antennas out our apartment windows, and established a nice 1-2Mbs link for Quake! (Of course, we spent a few minutes trying to line up the antennas just right as our apartments were about 200 feet apart and didn’t quite face each other.) We were in complete Geekdom! Our network name: WGNET. (Wireless Grange Network… another story for another post…)

Hopefully someday we can establish the link again, or I can find some usefulness for this awesome card. I did find a great page for building antennas and amplifiers for this card! Hacking the Original 915MHz WaveLAN from the Low Cost Wireless Network How-To page.

I’ve also posted some information on designing and building your own 915MHz yagi antenna for less than US$10.

I was graciously given this wonderful piece of mechanical sorcery from a friend. Back in college, I bought the Japanese version of this beast for an absurd amount because it was cool… A 386SX-20Mhz with 8MB of RAM and… get this… a red neon gas plasma display. Well, after many days of tinkering and trying to make that Japanese luggable useful, all I got it to do was run a Star Trek game that made the PC speaker go blip-blip-boop. We’re talking Pat Soo Hoo Apple //e sound effects on the PC here. The screen image took up 2/3 of the screen because it had a Japanese graphics card, and that’s what happens when you run American programs on it. The luggable went into storage and stayed there for a while..

Not too long ago, the American version of that Japanese luggable falls into my lap. It’s an IBM P70, better known as the 8573. Dang!! I gotta do something with it now… Again it’s a 386SX-20MHz, 8MB of RAM, and has a 120MB ESDI hard drive. This P70 also included a SMC Ethernet card and a 2400baud IBM modem! Also, it has that awesome, hot-to-the-touch neon gas plasma screen!! So, what do you do with an old PC? Why, put Linux on it and make it useful!!! Hey, IBM is allowing people to run Linux in a VM session under OS/390 on a mainframe. If a mainframe likes it, than a luggable must want a piece of the action.

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Finally!! Well, after a looong html hiatus, I have finally overhauled my website. It is now in a better manageable system… before, I had to update everything with Notepad and hard code the HTML. Now, I am using WordPress and Gallery. I’ll be tweaking the site’s appearance in the coming weeks, so please be sure to send me feedback if you have any suggestions!

To navigate around the site, just click on the different areas located under “Contents”…