First post of '08!
Well, I have a few Intel x86 machines that may be of testbed interest to some - 6 to be precise. Despite the specs you see below, all (yes, all) the machines contain floppy drives.
All the machines in question run Linux (Arch Linux specifically), so if you wish I can post output such as /proc/cpuinfo, and/or you can to ssh to them and check them out yourself. If you wish, I can also peer into the machine itself and get part numbers of devices and such.
The first 3 of the PCs below are "always" connected to the 'Net (the 4th port on this house's router/modem is taken via another PC not in this list) but they can be disconnected and other PCs connected if desired. The connection itself is a 10MBps down / 1MBps up link with a 12GB monthly cap, so while I have a nice connection, I like to stay under the cap as much as possible, so "en masse" downloading is, while a one-off option once a month, not something I'll do frequently (if you know what I mean - specifically relating to downloading large OS/testcase codebases, if your OS is eg 80-100MB I'll be less likely to want to download 3 complete recompliations... if any OS here is 100MB that is). Said cap will be being upgraded to 25GB soon so this will become less of a problem.
My "main" PC:
2.66GHz P4, 512MB RAM, 64MB onboard Intel video, USB 2.0, etc. Has an 80GB HD with unallocated space that could be used for a primary partition and unallocated space that could be used for 1 or more extended partitions and both of these (relatively sizable) chunks of space add up to, as far as cfdisk is concerned, 28418.35MB of unused space. If you're pretty sure your disk driver(s) won't suddenly say "ooh, other partitions!" *chomp chomp* you can write to this area. This PC also has a Sony branded 24x/10x/40x (whatever that means) CD-RW in it, and onboard networking and sound, and I route audio output through the PC below.
My "music" PC:
450MHz P3 with 320MB RAM, has 2 USB 1.1 slots on the back and a SB16 in it. Has 1 32GB disk (40GB with 32GB limiter switch, I set Linux up on it before I realised Linux implements its own disk driver out of the BIOS) and 1 40GB disk in it (the same as the 1st, just without the limiter switch set) however at the time of writing, this PC is on the floor to my left and despite being switched on and all it only has 1 of the 2 disks in it. I am yet to backup+wipe the 2nd, it may be available for use when this is done. This PC has a CD-ROM drive in it also, and onboard video and networking. Sound is provided by a SB16 (hence the name "music PC" - I listen to music via the SB16) and headphones are plugged in. Feel free to write SB16 test code and I can listen to and/or record the results. NOTE: As well as onboard video, this PC additionally has a PCI video card with I think 4MB RAM on it.
My server:
500MHz P3 with, like my music machine, 320MB of RAM. It has a 250GB disk in it with 1GB of unallocated space which could be used for a primary partition. If you're VERY VERY sure your disk driver will be nice to the rest of the disk, you can write to this space, but if you're only 99% sure perhaps removing any/all code that writes to the disk from the codebase would be a good idea as I intend to sort out a few years of work onto this disk and do not yet have a second disk to mirror all files/work/etc onto, so losing the contents of this disk would be, well, not *exactly* very good.
This machine has NO USB in it if you're wondering, and onboard networking. Additionally, this machine has a 2-bus SCSI channel and I have an old ~9GB SCSI disk that has a copy of Win2K, and I can backup+wipe this disk if you wish to test any SCSI code with it. I can remove the 250GB (IDE) disk from it if you feel your code may see the IDE disk and do anything out-of-the-ordinary to it. By the way... Yes, I do have a Win2K license, so if I *had* to reinstall Winfailure on the SCSI disk or elsewhere, I could. Second-last, this PC has a 5.25" disk drive I put in for the lulz - as far as I can tell, the system is not even aware that it is present, despite making a right old clunk at bootup. *I have no 5.25" test disks and all disks that I have put in the drive have not come out readable.* Finally, this machine has a very interesting feature: I discovered in the BIOS one day that it could send all output/input to the serial port. Yes, that's right! One of these days I'll snag myself a serial interface cable and hook that port up to my main PC and forward it to the internet. Who knows, with a serial cable + SCSI "test" stuff, you could remotely debug/test SCSI code on this machine... xD
My "old PC":
This is a rather oldish PC with interesting specs. It has a 400MHz Celeron in it (yes, eww you might say, but it works, and that's all I really care about). Despite the nice processor speed, I only have 32MB RAM spare. I've been considering stealing some of my music box's RAM... anyway, I know that the motherboard is from 1998 or so, and it has 2 USB blocks on the board but I have no connectors for them. I have an old 6GB disk and a 4GB disk and I plan to wipe these and put them in this machine, and once wiped both disks will be available for use, unless I set a "real" OS (ie the OS I plan to use on the machine on a daily basis) up on it. This PC has some kind of (ISA) 1MB video card from 1992 and a Realtek 8029 (I think, that figure looks right) network card - the kind that is so old, it has both BNC and Ethernet connectors on it. This box lastly has some form of PCI sound, and NO CD-ROM DRIVE.
Thinkpad 380XD laptop:
This box has a 133MHz Pentium behind it and I think 8, 16 or 32MB RAM. It also has (thanks to me) had a few changes - they don't add to it, but (unfortunately for me) rather take away from it. A while ago I wanted to see how this machine worked so decided to remove the casing. It does still work, but I accidentally ripped the (highly proprietary) HD cable and I don't dare try to plug the HD back in, so this machine is more or less a (fixed-) diskless unit. The 380XD design thankfully calls for a floppy disk and CD-ROM drive, although the CD-ROM drive is... well... iffy/picky about the kind of CDs I put in it - for starters, I *have* to use CD-Rs, not CD-RWs, which is a pain, and additionally, I've noticed it will sometimes not actually read the CD-Rs I put in at all. So this would be a floppy-disk-only machine. Lastly, the 380XD DOES NOT have onboard networking, and despite the fact that the particular machine I was given (I was given most of my PCs - all except the music PC actually) had a PCMCIA network card in it with a proprietary adapter I wasn't given the cable for, so networking with this machine is unfortunately not a possibility, however I may be able to get a cable for the adaptor someday, and even possibly a replacement HDD cable!
Thinkpad T22 laptop:
This machine has a supposedly 900MHz CPU but it clocks in at around 650MHz, and it has 256MB RAM. It's in more or less "usable" condition, however the display backlight is pretty much b0rked and will only stay on for 1 second or so, so I need to plug it into an external video source for it to work. That aside, the disk is also somewhat "iffy" and on its way out, so while available as a test machine, you'd be better with using the floppy disk drives I have with this machine (I have both the external and slot-in FDD models for this unit) or the CD/DVD-ROM drive (but I have no DVD burner, so that would be more a CD unit). The drive in this machine will read CD-RWs, and the unit also has Ethernet and sound.
I also have an ISA modem, a PCI modem, and get this - an 8-bit ISA *radio* card from 1992 or so. Provided you don't blow it up (as I really treasure it as an antique) you can poke at this thing. It's in the music PC
Well, that's about it from here. Hopefully this is in some way helpful!
-dav7
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