hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0591.txt

Episode: 591
Title: HPR0591: sdf and openvms deathrow
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0591/hpr0591.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:36:45

---

.
.
Good day. My name is JWP.
I'm doing the hacker public radio show today.
Today is Saturday, November 6th in my kitchen.
I wanted to talk to you about
a few places where you can learn an awful lot about
the Unix command line.
Get free website and email and chats and stuff.
In a place that's really helped me to grow
with my ability to use BSD, Linux,
OpenVMS and stuff.
The first place is, I forgot the contact information.
My contact information is the blog at
jwp5.wordpress.com.
That's where the show notes are for this.
If you need links or anything like that there.
My email address is jwp5 at hotmail.com.
All righty.
So, public, the first one that I have,
if you go into your browser, on your phone,
device or computer, go to www.sdf.org.
And it was first established in 1987.
And sdf stands for Super Dimension Fortress.
It's a network community of free software authors,
teachers, librarians, students, researchers,
hobbyists, computer enthusiasts.
The augurl and visually impaired, it's operated.
It's a nonprofit.
It's mission is to provide a remotely accessible
computing facilities for the advancement of public education,
cultural enrichment, scientific research,
and recreation.
Members can interact electronically with each other,
regardless of their location using passive or interactive forms.
The further purposes include recreational uses of information
concerning liberal and fine arts.
Okay, I've used it a long time.
I've never saw no liberal or fine arts.
The members have a unique shell access to games.
I've never done games there.
Email.
I've done a lot of email there.
I've done a little use nut there.
Chat.
A bolt-in board.
You get a web space.
Something called the Gover Space,
programming utilities, archivers, browsers, and more.
The SDF community is made up of carrying highly skilled people
who operate behind the scenes to maintain a non-commercial internet.
For more information about the membership levels,
you can click the join button.
Interestingly, they have dial-up access.
For instance, if you're using your phone or your tablet and you use dial-up,
you can dial up and still get your mail.
I didn't even know it was possible anymore,
but yeah, it's possible.
They have dial-up.
You can dial that thing.
It was useful for me in the Republic of Georgia to do this.
I was in Georgia.
There was no G3.
I was like, damn, I really need to check my email.
Boom.
I said, ah, yeah, I had the number in my phone from the SDF dial-up and that was right there.
Dialing up, doing my stuff.
Okay, so let's go ahead and check the member projects just one second.
I'm going to press the pause button.
Okay.
Back.
Okay, so they have a lot of different versions of this, right?
Now, the free version, you get 200 megabyte of disc quota or 5,000 files about it into four areas.
You get MUT, Pop 3, IMAP, ICQ, Twitter, and BS Lite.
I didn't even know they had IMAP, so that's something new.
You get games, mud, links, gofer.
You get a webmail interface, a trace ping, who is, dig, and more.
Inbound SSH, FTP, and SFTP connections.
I use Pine.
They have a bunch of other stuff.
I use Nano there.
So that's the basic one.
I wanted something a little, something more, right?
They have an instructor that's free, a student that's free.
The dial-up is $7 to $10 a month, right?
They have a DSL, which you can connect to DSL for a price as well.
Now, this is what I am.
I'm an ARPA member, and it was $36 for one time fee.
I really feel that I got a lot for $36.
I get 600 megabytes of disc quota.
That's in a raid, right?
15,000 files.
You get everything that the user account does.
I get to vote on everything that I've never voted.
I have a private ARPA member server.
Also, outbound, telnet, SSH, all of that stuff.
I get, I don't know what YouTube CP means, but it's clearing that
I need via dial-up or TCP.
And I got a domain.
I got a JWP We-Man domain.
I mean, it's not that great or anything, but it's 50 megabytes.
For instance, I'm going to say I'm working, and I need to give a file to somebody.
I don't want to go to the Google Docs method.
I just, quick, you know, SAP.
Put the file there.
Do a quick change, and it's there.
And that way, I don't have to get into my Google Docs or anything like that.
And so that ARPA is the one that I use.
But they have a bunch of other ones, and it's a...
They have a meta ARPA, which is $36 every year.
But I don't really need that.
But if you want to do SSH tunnel forwarding with no limit on bandwidth,
it might want to get on that $36 annually thing, right?
VPN also is $36 annual.
And that would really come in.
And so if you're doing a lot of...
What do you call coffee shop stuff?
All right?
If you're using the weafy in the coffee shop, not the internet cafe, but the coffee shop.
Right?
The internet cafe has other things that are really interesting.
But the coffee shop thing, I heard about this sheep thing,
that does all kinds of strange stuff, or their Facebook and stuff.
They have a VPN between $18 and $36 annually,
that gives you between $503 gigabyte monthly transfer.
So then you're completely safe.
No one can do anything to you.
Okay, so that's pretty much it for SDF.
And it has all the stuff.
And they have all kinds of stuff there.
You can VPS, you can do all that stuff for a total private server, or a day-been, or whatever you want.
It's all right there.
It's like, go daddy, but from the Linux app for sure.
But this actually helps when people do some things.
The second one that I use, and I had a podcast about it before,
but it was a while ago, so I can talk about it again.
And it's a death row of VMS.
And the company where I work, they bought the compact, which bought digital, which did VMS.
You can get VMS at the hobby program for $36.
And why do you want to do it?
Because it's probably the geekiest thing that I've ever done, right?
It's really, really geeky.
And so it's death row, thistech.net.
It's in the show notes.
And I talked to Beave a long time, and it's really good.
And so what is the death row cluster?
A death row cluster is a couple of computers acting as one large computer.
The cluster currently consists of DC Alpha 64-bit, a vaccine 32-bit.
Some UVAX hardware, some emulated, running the OpenVS operating system.
OpenDMS is dying.
It's going to die.
Robust is Linux, so it's probably the most robust operating system that I've ever seen.
Okay, and so it's the cluster.
And so if you have, want to get your geekiness on, and you have an old AMD 64,
and you want to spend $36, get the STEM virtualization,
and you have access to an internet where you can put it.
Now, I'm sure Beave would really like you to get there.
And so what does it do?
It's the idea of the cluster is to promote the OpenVMS operating system
and give people a chance to play with it.
People are welcome to test the security features of the cluster.
Port non-commercial code, learn basic ins and outs of the VMS operating system.
The cluster supports many programming languages, and they have them all.
They got cobalt there. They got ADA, they got Bliss, Marco, 32-64, C++.
Basic, they have it all.
Beave said he let his daughter learn Pascal there,
so one of the servers has Pascal on it, right?
And so the cluster is available for general public,
these as long as it's not for commercial purposes.
The cluster uses the hobbyist licenses,
hence we cannot allow commercial usage of the cluster.
The commercial usage would violate our license agreement
with the OpenVMS hobbyist and cannot let that happen.
There is no charge for an account on the cluster.
The cluster is always, will be 100% for your charge.
If you're not sure you need or want an account,
please pay with the demo account first.
The demo account will give you full,
near full access to the system.
Some work objects are restricted to use the demo account
you can tell them that are SSH.
To a member, log in with demo user, and you're there.
You can also donate Beave's a nice guy.
He's got his hosting arrangement worked out with his work, I think.
The OpenVMS hack was created by Dev.
He calls himself DABE in the 1990s.
And it's had multiple contributors.
So they have a fact there.
How can I help the death row cluster?
Well, number one, you can go there and get an account.
That's one that you can go do.
Death row cluster represents a multi-hundred dollar
cost each month taking into consideration hosting
internet connectivity administration time.
Luckily we have some great sponsors.
The people at this type of communications
have let him have a secure place for the hardware.
So he has some sponsors that they help him.
There are other ways to support if you don't make a donation.
You have old hardware lying aton.
From time to time they need scuzzy drives.
In any hardware that can be used directly with the cluster, for example,
old U-vaxen or alpha terminals.
So any of that stuff.
So if you're interested in learning how to program,
it's a really great thing.
I thought about getting a DLC 4000.
It's all my list of things to follow on eBay one day.
And if I do, then it's going to be really great.
And I'll try to get into Beads cluster with it.
Alright, I hope you'll have a great day.
And this is my first hack or public radio thing.
I hope you all really like it.
I used my Panasonic RR U5570 and I hope the quality is okay.
I didn't have it directly in front of me.
It's about 6-8 inches away from the center of my laptop screen.
So I hope the quality...
Thank you for listening to Hack or Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net.
So head on over to C-A-R-O.N-E-C for all of her TV.
Thanks for watching.