[0] https://old.bigcat.space/278062.gif - here it is for the curious: https://imgur.com/a/AfcEnRw

edit: the website just loaded, but not the images. It's still alive.

This is not true. It shows horizontal scroll at this resolution. Absolutely unusable in my 15" CRT.

I didn't have the internet at home so would design the website there, save to floppy disk, then go to the local library that had internet terminals you could hire for an hour. From there I'd upload the website from floppy disk.

Once back in the early 2000s I connected the floppy drive incorrectly and the entire thing melted inside with some smoke. It was rather funny at the time, mostly because it wasn't my computer. That said, I'm hoping bigcat.space r&d headquarters are not on fire and the website will be back up soon :)

Xitami web server, because it's the only one that does no caching at all, so the website is always served fresh from the floppy.

So I think it's more about proving what you can do with old software/hardware when you put your mind to it...

I used 56k modems to surf and a floppy would take like 1440/7 seconds to load at perfect conditions. Most pages loaded way faster than that.

edit: Nice could load the site now.

"Windows 3.11 for workgroups!

Xitami web server, because it's the only one that does no caching at all, so the website is always served fresh from the floppy."

Perfect stack.

Sony used to have a floppy disk based digital camera. I think it could take about 20 pictures per disk. Plus, I’m sure you could reduce that size.

"Xitami web server, because it's the only one that does no caching at all, so the website is always served fresh from the floppy."

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20220120092324/https://old.bigca...

Even more surprising, his page isn't just pretty, it is functional! You can get a copy of the demo for Wolfenstein 3D off of the site (supposedly, I did not try).

In fact, you would have to do active work to disable the caching.

DOS did have SmartDrive [1], though, which IIRC provided a more typical disk cache. I wouldn't think it was loaded in the default configuration, though I'm not sure.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartDrive

Smartdrv, like Fastopen, just allows disk buffers to survive a Close File call. Normally DOS only does close-to-open consistency i.e. buffers are flushed on close. Smartdrv specifically also allows write-back rather than write-through.

And, anyway: yes, Smartdrv is enabled by default in 6.x installs with enough memory.

Now I am curious if I put it online (I still have the machine) how it would work. Seems fun to do.

Can someone re-insert the disk please??

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/

In the original film [0] and book, the signal is caused by a soda-bottle being knocked by a window-blind against a Morse-code telegraph key.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(1959_film)

Here's the original: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053137/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(video_game)

Thanks guys for sharing the link of the movie.

Where to stop?

Is the final stop

A startup looking for funding, full circle

That is interesting as in winter and summer you will get a noticeable difference in availability. It varies between 9 and 15 hours of sun a day.

I was last up there around '98 to help top off the batteries with water, but it's still running strong today.

https://gallatinhamradio.com/repeaters/BozemanAreaRepeaters.... <- The Bridger Ridge one the one I went to.

Some of those repeaters will let you patch into the phone system. It's slick stuff, but I haven't worked with it for a few decades now.

It's fully solar because a long time ago the sun got hot and the solar system got put together and that combination resulted in life and then later some sample of that life built a website with materials extracted from what the sun did to the original mess.

Those events are not particularly similar to our sun's normal solar radiation.

I think you are grasping at straws (although I'll be honest I don't know what that literally means). And I think the word solar really only applies to our own sun.

> I think you are grasping at straws (although I'll be honest I don't know what that literally means).

Yup, I tried all I could ^^.

> And I think the word solar really only applies to our own sun.

So be it then. In scifi they always talked about sol-3 anyway and caspix-9, etc..

Independently can we pls stop using floppy disks to show how slow, fast, small or big something else is in comparison?

I haven't had a floppy disk in my hands for 19 years and they were shitty 2000 already.

I also guess even less people are even getting anything out of floppy disk comparisons.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's perfectly possible to write a non-shallow comment about work that you consider shallow. More likely, though, there isn't much that's interesting to say about it, in which case you shouldn't post anything.

The fact the link doesn't work is, as you point out, inevitable. But that doesn't detract the artistic merit of the submission.

Agreed, looked at in that light I'd suggest that it actually adds to the artistic expression. I was one of a few, apparently, that the site loaded for (sans images) and it was a tiny thrill to see it load. So, it felt like watching a performance of sorts, for me at least.

It reminds me of the few times I've seen random people stumble across game jams and complain that they're unfinished and have bugs

I'd rather read about the story and implementation.

It seems to me from your other comments in this thread that you’re intent on being negative / reductionist to others work without offering much to the conversation, so I will happily disengage with you now.

It was a fun thing he did to see if he could and when, to his apparent delight, it worked he decided to share his results. As someone who grew up in the era of floppy disks and constant worry about disk space and performance I found the whole thing very entertaining.

Sometimes we need to take a break from all the serious and just have a little fun. Items like this guy's post are why I come to HN.

I guess different OSes and server software would handle it very differently, so using HN to trigger a huge overload would be a smart way to get some science done along those lines.

“See, its slow.”