SDF’s first two DEC Alpha Servers AS1200. These were dual 21164 @533MHz which took over the role of the x86 machines from the Cyber Cafe and soley ran NetBSD beginning with version 1.4 This this time SMP support was limited. The Livingston Portmaster PM25e handled dialup modem terminal service and an internet was over SDSL in Bellevue WA. Later these machines would be joined by others and installed at the NWLink datacenter just down the road.
SDFeu in 2003 prior to being shipped to London.
Eric Schnoebelen was a long time supporter of SDF and decided to expand his home built computer room to accommodate not just the clients of Telereality Associates but also SDF. He experimented with a multi-homed T1 setup with 3 different providers routing both SDF’s and CIRR’s Class C IPv4 networks. The main systems used in this setup were DEC Alpha DS10Ls of which Eric had an endless stack. They were cheap, fast and mostly reliable with a common failure being the CPU fan. It was easier to just swap disks with a spare and replace the fan later.
During this time all of the SDF hosts were Alphas. Alpha Processor Incorporated was a group of former DEC employees after the Compaq acquisition of DEC that built a “Super Computing” class dual processor 1U server using 21264 CPUs at 833MHz. They were designed to run Linux and in fact, have Linux in ROM which can be used for failure recovery, but also run NetBSD quite well. Though, in those days SMP wasn’t very reliable and usually one processor would cause a deadlock making it difficult to debug and not ready for production.
Eric had a stash of Alphas in Plano, but these are the ones that were retired in Seattle. They were going to be recycled, but not quite yet.
Eric Schnoebelen was one of the many caretakers and supporters of not just the SDF Public Access UNIX System, but of the Texas Lunch Bunch / lonestar.org, USENIX and many others. In the DFW area Eric was known was the “News Kitty” and would gladly provide USENET news feeds and uplink posting via UUCP and later NNTP. He was an early supporter of NetBSD and pkgsrc and contributed directly to the hp300 port. The host name ‘egsner’, which was his main server for a number of years, got its name from the label on a VAX backup tape from college. While many were using dialup UUCP in the late 80s and early 90s, Eric had convinced Southwestern Bell to terminate a 56K frame relay (and later full T1) in his apartment.
NetBSD 9.0 is dedicated to the memory of Matthias Drochner, who passed away in August 2018 and Eric Schnoebelen, who passed away in March 2019.
Ultimately SDF isn’t about the computers it runs on, but the people that shape its community. Over the years, many people have cited SDF has the place where they first developed their UNIX skills, formed bands, shared interests and developed long lasting friendships. More SDFers can be found at https://sdf.org/?sdfers
1985 – Apple ][e purchased from ComputerCraft in Dallas TX
1987 – SDF-1 launched Magic City MicroBBS
1989 – Coherent UNIX / Citadel BBS on an IBM XT Turbo
1990 – attctc.dallas.tx.us ‘killer’ shutdown during Operation Sundevil.
1990 – Kodak Interactive UNIX SVR3 on i386
1991 – lonestar.org and gets a UUCP connection from smu.edu
1992 – Texas MetroNET forms and grows quickly
1993 – SDF hosts Telecom Standards Review on a 386BSD box
1994 – Receives 3B2/400 hardware from University of South Carolina
1994 – A Linux host called ‘kickme’ serves as SDF’s internet gateway
1994 – SDF gets a BLIT, Plan9 is tried and a KS10 at UW is discussed
1995 – Lucent donates a 3B2/500 and SCSI XM to SDF.
1995 – SDF hosts saomai.org and sevcom.com on NetBSD 1.0 i386
1996 – Expands to 10 dialups, ISDN provided by KESHER.NET
1996 – Joins a CyberNET Cafe project in Dallas running Linux
1996 – Telereality Associates is formed focusing on NetBSD solutions
1996 – Colocation at MALR in Lewisville Texas
1998 – Attempts a move to NetBSD from System V Unix, runs Linux
1999 – freeshell.org registered to move off of lonestar.org
1999 – Texas MetroNET sells, iczer starts Trancell
2001 – Migrates to NetBSD 1.4 on two DEC Alpha Servers AS1200
2001 – SDF Public Access TWENEX – twenex.org
2002 – SDF co-locates at NWlink in Bellevue WA
2002 – Expands to a mix of NetBSD 1.6 on DEC Alpha and Sun Sparc
2002 – SDF-EU begins in London, moves to Falkenstein Germany
2003 – Migrates to DS10Ls and is hosted by CIRR.COM in Plano TX
2003 – SDF-JP is started, though hosted in the Seattle (now Tokyo)
2010 – Migrates to x86_64 with some Alpha in Tukwila WA
2010 – Plan9 Boot Camp under NetBSD XEN pae domus
2011 – NetBSD 5.x
2012 – DEC Alpha shell servers are shutdown
2022 – Last DEC Alpha DS10L is shutdown and leaves the building
Today – NetBSD 9.x mostly in WA, TX and Germany with VMs elsewhere
Thanks to: chuq, christos, hrs, msaitoh, ryo, ebijun, eric, aaron, sp, srl, roy, cchang, jhutto, franka, mboyer, thoerpj, manu, NetBSD foundation and the community and the various SDFers over the years.