| The
Creeping Network - The Main Page |
||
|
![]() The
Creeping Network - A Brief History To This Madness
Creeping Net
was started as a silly little personal website of mine in 2001 about my
new-found interest in vintage IBM Compatible workstations, and has
since continued me on a long line of computer-based mayhem for over 7
years. I have gone from a creepy and barely social 19 year old
brat in his mom's back bedroom assembling 386 and 486 based PCs out of
cast-off parts, to becoming a certified expert on computer systems.Creeping Net started all because of a 1992 Flight 386 SX that was given to me by an ex-bandmate's father because he had several old machines and wanted to get rid of them. Soon following afterward included an IBM PC-330 from his daughter, and the GEM 386/20 joint project between me and the rhythm guitar player. By the end of 2001, I had enough skills to get A+ Certified, but held off for another year. 2002 brought me a garbage can Packard Bell Legend Restoration Project, as well as a source of new parts to hot-rod the Flight for playing DOS games. By the end of the year, the collection had grown from three computers to 9 computers consisting of 2 pentiums, 4 486's, a 286, and a 486 Laptop. By this point I was already networking machines together with a crossover cable. 2003 was the biggest boom yet in activity, growing my collection, both counted and uncounted for, to a grand total of 32 machines at my mom's house at once, including a DEC 486, a Zenith 486, a pair of Deskpro XL's, a Deskpro 386/16 (the original), my first Macintosh, 3 more laptop computers, another PS/Valuepoint, a Zenith laptop, an Amdek 286, and a trunkload of whitebox Pentium and 486 PC's, as well as the Godzilla Tower bought by one of my friends for $80 after souping it up. 2004 Added even MORE machines to the list, including an XT Clone, another Macintosh, a Deskpro 286 (orignal style, REV2), an XT clone with a Pentium Processor (now the IBM XT 5160 in a Clone Chassis), Also got my hands on a pair of PS/2's, built the monster 6 computer KVM Switch Rig complete with networking and a quasi-automatic 56K Dial-Up Proxy Server setup to share internet with mom's computer in the livingroom that I built her from cast-off parts (which was retired this year after 6 years of faithful service, she still has it though), and a trio of IBM EduQuests. 2005 was when I left the south behind after 6 months of saving my money and selling off computers, I was then narrowed down to the Flight with a new 486 board in it (that was really flaky), the GEM (of course), and a newly acquired GEM 286. After getting to to the PAC-NW, I found a lot of resources for old computer parts locally, built my ex-room mate's (same person who gave me the 330) kid a K-6 266 based computer, and continued to build a series of hot rods out of the remaining parts till the end of the year. 2006 was a year of moving on, E-bay had run dry of good vintage machines, the town never had many to begin with, with a lot of K6's disguised as 386 level hardware on the shelves for $10 apiece. I started to trade and buy off Vintage-Computer.com, and got 2 XT boards from Terry Yaeger to recover from the XT Clone incident that happened on E-bay before I moved when I sold my Micro Configuration's Corp 0A XT. Also, a Pawn Shop visit yielded an interesting win in a Cat Computers 486 based system from 1994 for $20.00 with monitor, mouse, and keyboard, which became my project to create the "ultimate 486". I also finally got another laptop to replace the broken Prostar I moved with, an IBM Thinkpad 755CD, and later did a full restore on an IBM Thinkpad I-Series 1400, before replacing it around christmas with a brand new Everex StepNote NC1500. 2007, somehow the computer gods have been smiling on me for this year despite having loads of bad luck (medical, financial, and social issues, and lack of musicial inspiration out the wazoo). Somehow at the start of the year I landed a Tandy 1000 EX at a pawn shop, I got my XT upgraded to the hilt and networked complete with even a sound system capable of 16-bit sound on an 8-bit bus. Another pawn shop visit got me a Macintosh SE FDHD and an IBM PS/2 Model 9556 SL/2 for next to nothing. I also expanded my network to include a switch and a WAP, bringing Creeping Net up to date, and improving my network skills (it's like playing with Legos to me now). The Flight went through a makeover and became my main Digital Video rig for my videos on youtube involving vintage videogames and computers, starting with a long series of Game Genie videos involving the Super Mario Bros. games on NES, and some vids of my Tandy 1000 EX in full-on-screen action. At the end of the year, the Cat Computers 486 went on the fritz, and I wound up having to find a graphics card. As E-bay has managed to go to the crapper as far as vintage computer parts prices go, I went out and bought a whole AMD 486 for $20.00 and cannibalized the S3 video card out of that, only to make the Ulitmate 486 even more stable and ultimate. For a More In Depth History, Check Out The Articles Section HERE that tells it all........ In The Here And Now - 2007/2008 I have changed from Yahoo Update to Live Journal, just because Yahoo would not work on Mozilla Firefox, and I'm not interested in keeping the "corporate empire" the only one in the game of web browsers. Hopefully it should work in Arachne and older versions of IE/Netscape as well. |
|