2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server

by mbbrutman • 3 years ago

123 90 3 years ago

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

(Sorry, I forgot to preface this with Show HN)

  ** 2023-07-14 18:38 PDT The DOS machine is getting DoSed.  It's still beeping and happy but it's busy. **

This website is hosted on a 39 year old PCjr running at 4.77Mhz and it has been running over 2,500 hours continuously now. No reboots or program restarts ... you can see the current runtime stats by visiting http://brutmanlabs.org/status .

The machine specs are:

  - IBM PCjr w/ NEC V20 CPU (the V20 gives a small speed bump compared to the original 8088)
  - jrIDE sidecar providing expansion RAM to bring the system up to 736KB and an IDE port
  - Kingston SSD w/ a Startech SATA-IDE bridge
  - Parallel printer sidecar, modified to be bi-directional
  - Xircom PE3-10BT Ethernet adapter hanging off of the parallel port
  - IBM PC DOS 5.02 and mTCP HTTPServ
  - APC UPS (45 watt power draw with networking equipment)
  - Dynamic DNS is being handled by my home router, which forwards port 80 to the machine.

All of the upgrade parts are there for performance or convenience; you could use period correct parts and everything would work the same. (The IDE adapter would be a homebrew MFM adapter and you'd have to use something like a 3Com 3C503 on a bus adapter, but all of that existed in the mid 1980s when the machine was new.)

The web server is my own work, part of the mTCP project. Here are some of the features:

  - serves HTTP 0.9, 1.0 and 1.1 requests to be friendly to vintage browsers
  - Maps "normal" looking paths and resources to DOS 8.3 file format
  - HTTP 1.1 requests can be pipelined.
  - can serve up to 8 concurrent connections
  - logging to local disk and over UDP
  - can serve pre-compressed content
  - basic auth
  - runs on DOS 2.1 and up
  - built in SNTP client for time syncing

Besides the UPS it needs the SNTP client to achieve long run times, otherwise dropped interrupts cause the machine to lose time. Without the SNTP client it was losing up to a few minutes per day depending on the system load. The SNTP client also helped it transition through the daylight savings time change in March.

The limiting factor is going to be disk space for logging; it is generating logs and eventually that disk partition will fill up. (I need to add log rotating and compression.) This machine was running when the ChatGPT client for DOS was announced, and it was hosting the mTCP networking pages at the time, so it got quite a bit of traffic. I learned after that to leave a lot of space for logs.

It beeps when somebody visits - enjoy!

anyfoo11• 3 years ago

A PCjr? That somehow makes this more funny than if it was a 5150 or something (but equally impressive).

I remember playing around with Xircom parallel port ethernet adapters and TCP/IP packet drivers (and corresponding applications) in the 90s on an old 286 laptop I still had. Almost exclusively used it as a client, though. Good times.

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

Yep, a PCjr. No parity bit on the memory even.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Xircom adapter. It's portable and great for machines without ISA slots, but the max throughput is about 40KB/sec. A nice, real ISA card like a WD8003 can do over 100KB/sec on the same machine.

userbinator• 3 years ago

I guess HTTPS is just a little bit too much processing power for it to handle?

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

Yeah, far too much for a little CPU like this. Never mind the horror of trying to port all of the libraries and keep them up to date.

Although there are people are using Apache in front of their vintage computers to terminate SSL for them while still having the vintage computer handle the request.

ipcress_file• 3 years ago

One of my friends was way ahead of the rest of us in 1987, and bought a V20 to upgrade his Tandy computer. He works for a telcom now. Nice to see one still churning away.

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

I bought my first NEC V20 in 1986 or 1987. It was my first time touching the motherboard of a computer which made it nerve wracking, but they were very popular at the time. I bought mine mail order through the Exec PC BBS, which I think was in Chicago.

mysterydip• 3 years ago

PCjr was my first family computer! Love it, thanks for the nostalgia trip.

omoikane• 3 years ago

Did you need to do anything extra for cooling? One thing that impressed me about old hardware that I did not appreciate back then is that the CPUs don't even need heatsinks. I imagine this PCjr don't have one either, but it's probably got a fan somewhere to circulate air through?

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

There is a fan internally in the machine, but it was placed to cool the 5.25" floppy drive when it was in use.

I have more open space in this machine because I am using a 3.5" drive instead. I also replaced the original fan with a quieter Noctua. The jrIDE is running naked on the side of the machine because I think it was having heat issues.

In a later iteration of this machine it will get more direct cooling; the slots in the case are kind of restrictive.

williamsiddall• 3 years ago

He's dead, Jim.

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

It's still beeping ... busy != dead. Right now it's getting hammered pretty hard. I haven't implemented the clustering and load balancing yet.

It can serve 8 concurrent connections but that slows it down. It will queue a few more too; be patient and you will be rewarded.

wvenable• 3 years ago

It actually works for me if you just wait long enough for it load. Which, at this point, is very impressive.

basementcat• 3 years ago

May be fun to listen to a recording of the beeps.

eek2121• 3 years ago

pfft...that is nothing. I was on a 286 running a DOS IRC client and managed to take back an IRC channel with more than 150 users that was previously taken over...

...no joke. However, in all seriousness: nice.

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

I have a small IRC client for that 286 if you still have it. Even has some Unicode support, but being limited to CP437 kind of limits it. ;-0

anyfoo11• 3 years ago

Did that client exist in the 90s? I, too, IRC'd on a 286 laptop with TCP/IP packet drivers in the 90s.

tinus_hn3• 3 years ago

That’s slightly over 100 days of uptime. How is this special?

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

100+ days of runtime on nearly 40 year old hardware not designed as a server exposed to all of the garbage coming in on port 80.

Remember, this is a home computer from the mid 1980s. This thing is way outside of it's duty cycle. And the software is holding up pretty well too, even during what is effectively a DoS attack on a DOS machine.

quickthrower22• 3 years ago

Oh they mean a real web server exposed to the internet (not hiding behind an NGINX). Impressive.

Hug of death means I didn’t see the article

tinus_hn3• 3 years ago

Wow expectations sure have come down! When that computer was new, people had uptimes measured in years, 100 days was pedestrian.

anyfoo11• 3 years ago

Serious question: How could this not be special?

AdieuToLogic2• 3 years ago

The last time I checked on a FreeBSD server running Apache httpd for a previous client, it had an uptime of about 4,000 days.

So here is the obligatory:

  "Here's a nickle, kid.  Get yourself a better computer."[0]

:-D

0 - https://web.archive.org/web/20190304153157im_/https://assets...

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

FreeBSD is crusty, but is it really bad enough to compare to DOS 5.02?

Besides, who needs 32 bits when 16 will do ...

(Not serious.)

AdieuToLogic2• 3 years ago

Besides, who needs 32 bits when 16 will do ...

Hahaha, well played! :-)

Seriously, though, it is impressive to have a DOS machine running a web server in today's environment.

I assume dynamic content is produced via Sidekick[0]...

(ducks)

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland_Sidekick

yjftsjthsd-h• 3 years ago

FreeBSD is fine; FreeBSD with 4000 days of uptime would concern me just like a Linux box with that much uptime.

Borg3• 3 years ago

Haha :) I always extend my respect for such stuff.. It just shows how everything is bloated and ballooned today.. You barelly can browse modern web with 32bit today.. VSZ hits the sky (3GB).

lo_zamoyski• 3 years ago

A long time ago, an acquaintance of mine was working part-time at a tool manufacturer that was running either AIX or HP-UX (I cannot recall which) that had an uptime of something like 11 years. I do not recall what they used it for, unfortunately.

quickthrower22• 3 years ago

If you get 2 of these it would be DDOS

hedora• 3 years ago

I once ran most of a fish tank worth of water through an internet-facing 25MHz computer with at least that much uptime.

It stayed up, but I had to replace the boot floppy. (Not the whole drive; just the $5 disk).

No fish were harmed.

klysm2• 3 years ago

That is astonishing if water got on the motherboard

InvaderFizz2• 3 years ago

I had a 486 go through a tornado where the entire building was torn apart. Completely soaked.

Brought it home, let it dry for a few weeks. Worked fine for a few years after as a mp3 player.

schemescape2• 3 years ago

Is there a link with more info (while we wait for the server to catch up)? Sorry if I missed it!

Edit: misread the CPU as a 486 somehow. I was wondering why the clock speed was so low.

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

486? Nah. 4.77Mhz NEC V20, which is just slightly faster than an 8088.

This should tide you over: http://www.brutman.com/PCjr/pcjr_web_server.html

The main page is the best link. You might want to try back later after the initial rush; the machine is getting pounded.

schemescape2• 3 years ago

Got through today. Very impressive work!

29athrowaway• 3 years ago

Better press that Turbo button.

starkparker• 3 years ago

cf. https://fsturmat.net/blog/04202022/ on hosting a site running the same mTCP HTTPserv server under QEMU on a VPS, with SSL via Caddy reverse proxy.

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

http://floppy.museum also running mTCP HTTPServ, but on 80286 class hardware.

(That was featured earlier this year on HN.)

kristopolous• 3 years ago

You can also browse this in DOS

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachne_(web_browser)

jwrallie• 3 years ago

There is some beauty to the fact that even if you wanted to update your software, you can't unless you patch it by yourself, so you know that in a month or a year from now it will be exactly the same way you left it the last time you configured it (apart from the chance the hardware fails or the security by obscurity is breached somehow).

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

The machine continues to receive the hug of death .. especially with our friendly Europeans waking up. Have faith, it's still running. (And it's been surviving like this for four hours now.)

I've turned down the logging level a little bit and turned off the beeper. On this machine, a 50ms beep on the motherboard buzzer is 50ms of delay. :)

ndiddy2• 3 years ago

I think it's impressive how your site's managed to stay online when many sites hosted on much more powerful hardware haven't been able to handle HN frontpage levels of traffic.

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

Thanks ... I think people are having time-outs so it's not anywhere near close to perfect, but the machine has been running at 100% for five hours or so now and it is not crashing, so I'm happy.

rightbyte• 3 years ago

The power of good old static sites. I saw some number of the amount of electrical power going to web servers and it was like single digit percents.

The js-web is a huge waste environmentaly and it is sad since js is mostly used to spy and show ads.

sedatk• 3 years ago

What OS signature do you get when you portscan it? :)

tgv• 3 years ago

I very friendly opened the link, and it is still serving pages. The images are pretty slow to load, though. While reading the page, I thought it was just text, but then suddenly a banner appeared.

Great demo of what such a machine can do, and how much we take our 3GHz, 12 core machines for granted.

BTW, how do you keep it dust-free?

Uptrenda• 3 years ago

That keyboard there was a work of art. I can still remember typing on one as a kid. So responsive, so satisfying, it just compelled you to want to write more. I own a few mechanical keyboards now and none of them compare to the original IBM Model M (I have heard that there are companies making 'new ones' though so maybe I'll have to try one.)

anyfoo11• 3 years ago

Note that the original PCjr keyboard was notorious for being terrible. One of the major flaws that helped making that system a flop.

fuzztester2• 3 years ago

What were the other major flaws?

helf• 3 years ago

I type every day on an IBM model M ps2 keyboard that I have owned for 30 years lol. Currently connected to an i9-13900K system via a ps2 to usb adapter

CodeWriter23• 3 years ago

4.77Mhz on a V20? The whole point of the V20 was running 9.54Mhz.

anyfoo11• 3 years ago

Nah, it was also a bit faster at the same frequency.

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

There were several speeds of the V20, including the base version at 5Mhz. Using it as a drop-in replacement and keeping the system clock speed the same the NEC V20 would still give you a 15 to 20% performance bump because it used less clock cycles when executing many insgtructions.

(This machine has not been altered to speed the clock.)

charles_f2• 3 years ago

So how do you apply the latest DOS security patches without rebooting?

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

I'm sure I can go for a few more years until the next patch ...

On a more serious note, the web server is the problem here. I've tried to run long periods of time before but eventually it would crash. I finally found a 10+ year old parsing bug that wasn't handling quoting correctly, and it was some sort of crypto coin mining JSON request that tripped the bug. So even what I thought was bullet proof years ago turned out to be broken by changes in the user traffic.

charles_f2• 3 years ago

This is a priceless anecdote, thanks for sharing!

3dbrows• 3 years ago

Could this claim the title of “oldest host on the public internet serving traffic”?

At first I thought “~100 days, so what?” - but that was before I knew this was an 8088 managing to hold up to even just the background noise of the modern net (portscans, etc). It’s surviving being slashdotted by HN. Very impressive.

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

Maybe, with some qualifications. A machine that is powered on but serves almost no traffic would also qualify but not be terribly interesting.

I'm just happy it's been surviving the hug of death for 12+ hours now. Given the age and software that might be the true accomplishment.

K0balt2• 3 years ago

The complexity of operation of 2500 hours at 4.77Mhz, single core, is equivalent to about an hour on a garden variety modern server.

In my mind, this stuff is impossibly reliable and should simply not work, but here we are.

shric• 3 years ago

Are you referring to the CPU used for the site? If so, how did you arrive at one hour? I'd put it closer to a second.

K0balt2• 3 years ago

I was being extremely generous, but you are closer to the reality of the situation.

Back of the napkin-

assuming 2020 tech, 20 cores, 2.4ghz and ignoring all of the non-cpu complexity growth, it would be around 0.2 seconds lol.

If you were to wrap in the actual system complexity *operating frequency we’d probably be around 10ms equivalent complexity.

The reliability of modern computing systems is ridiculous.

bdowling2• 3 years ago

Somehow this is even more interesting after reading that OP is a Site Reliability Engineer for Google. http://www.brutman.com/Michael_Brutman_resume.pdf

mbbrutman22• 3 years ago

Sadly the project is mostly unrelated to my day job. I started mTCP at least 6 years before joining Google and at most of my time at Google is spent on much less fun things.

On the plus side, when I finally do get around to building a cluster of these and a load balancer I'll know what to do. ;)

nikau2• 3 years ago

Its probably on par with the feature set of googles internal load balancers :P

nikau2• 3 years ago

Before cattle computing and non stop vulnerabilities, high uptime was a badge of honour.

Was not at all uncommon to have heavy use Solaris or Tru64 boxes with 3 years uptime.

IceCreamJonsey• 3 years ago

Mike also runs the best PCjr forum! It's been invaluable for help as I got my recently purchased PCjr running with mods and flash media.

https://www.brutman.com/forums/index.php

2,500 continuous runtime hours on a 4.77Mhz DOS web server

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