Technologists Notes

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I don’t think I’ve spoken to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (The Last Folksinger) since I met him in 1966 in Columbia, MO. But, it is hard to imagine how different my life would be if not for the encouragement he gave to Caroline seven years later. Read the rest of this entry »

In my primary collection, I’ve accumulated roughly 800 LPs over the years. Some are junk, some are treasures, a few have never been unsealed, a few are in terrible condition, but mostly these are LPs that I want to hear and preserve. I’d been gradually digitizing them so I could listen to them in the car and on my phone, and so I’d have archival versions if the LPs were lost.

A few years ago, I got a new Audio-Technica turntable to displace my finicky decades-old Thorens (which is now configured for 78s). I did that, in part, to accelerate progress digitizing the LPs and now have maybe 20^[1] left before I’ve finished with the primary collection. Now seems the right time to summarize the tools I use and techniques I’ve developed. Both this post and the video are intended to be self-contained, but each probably offers details missing from the other.

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“It’s gettin’ dark, too dark for me to see”
“Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” – Bob Dylan (1973)

tl;dr an attempt at a tribute to Denny, my memories from 1969-73

Denny Freeman’s legacy is being thoroughly covered after we lost him Sunday:

• Denny Freeman, the Graceful Guitarist Who Made Everyone Sound Better, Has Died
• Austin guitar great Denny Freeman, who played with Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan, dies aged 76
• Beyond the Horizon with Denny Freeman
• “As soulful as humans get” Austin guitar great Denny Freeman remembered by music community PDF
• Guitarist Denny Freeman’s Musical Mastery Cut Across Austin’s Scene

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“The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on like a bird that flew”
(1975) “Tangled Up In Blue” – Bob Dylan

tl;dr with 86Box, obsolete hardware not needed

With prodding and help from Antoni Sawicki, and bits of help from others, I’ve been trying to get Dell Unix to be sustainable on modern hardware. I’d succeeded in building our SVR4 from the last sources on turn of the century and older hardware. VMware and VirtualBox options seemed plausible, but so far we haven’t gotten those to have minimally useful networking, only had slow SLIP.

Though it has been around for years, and used by Antoni before, I was unaware of 86Box until late last year when Antoni posted about it, particularly: Dell Unix on 86Box “Today let me present Dell Unix more properly, with 1024×768, 256 colors video and proper networking using emulated VGA and NIC.” That post illustrates Mosaic, FrameMaker et al.

That left the question “What about using Dell SVR4 on 86Box to build SVR4 from the sources?”
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