LOGOUT @ HRACKA.ORG


The worst thing about every change is, that after it things are different.
--Unknown

Hello!

You just reached my personal home page on hracka.org. I intend this page to be in pure HTML 2.0 as specified in RFC 1866, so do not expect any fancy styling or even quite basic stuff like tables. Yes, even tables are matter of HTML 3, in 1995 nobody needed them and if they did, they created them in ASCII as a preformated text. And people lived back then, survived these ancient dark times and even enjoyed them. So I try to re-create tiny part of that era here, because it seems somehow appropriate for my mostly retro-computing interests. I hope you can make it through.


Here you'll find my posts on various topics. Explanation is on the bottom of this page.


Who is this Logout, you ask?

My real name is Martin, I'm currently 37 and you can see me in the photo somewhere around this text. This text is being typed in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, where I currently live with my wife and son. As far as I can remember, for sure at least since 1995, I have been always tinkering with computers. It's what I do for a living and it's what I do for fun - of course it's quite different computing at work and at home. Let's leave the first one in the office and discuss the other one here.

I got my first computer in 1995. From a westerner's viewpoint, it was a totally obsolete piece of hardware - an old ZX Spectrum clone (more about it below). Even here, in the post-socialist area, it was already past its prime too, but not as much as in the developed world. There was still at least one paper magazine for ZX Spectrum users here, some developers still released software and games for it, new peripherals emerged, etc. Although I was fascinated with the machine, I updated to an old 286-based PC in two years, when I had the possibility. I was satisfied at first, but after some upgrades I noticed - that even though every newer machine is faster - it's not necessarily better. I kind of disliked MS-DOS and my relationship with Windows was even worse. That's when I discovered unix-like operating systems, moved to them and never came back.

And that really defines my personal computing interests: 8-bit computers with focus on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and compatibles, retrocomputing in general, Linux, Unix and Unix workstations. When I get out of my computer cave, I do Geocaching, running, amateur radio (OK1ZXS) or read a good sci-fi book. If day had more than 24 hours, it would be only better...

You may contact me, if you desire so, in couple of ways:

- via IRC: nickname logout on IRC
- via Mastodon: nickname logout on instance hackers.town
- via e-mail: logout128 at gmail dot com

In world without fences and walls, who needs Gates and Windows?

In the times when Windows 95 won over the undoubtly more capable operating systems like e.g. OS/2, I was still sitting behind my Speccy clone. When moved to PC, I took everything I got as given and as I already said, wasn't very happy with it. Little did I know there was an emerging operating system called GNU/Linux, based on a long heritage of Unix and unix-like systems. That soon changed: in 1999, I installed my first Linux system - RedHat 6.1 - and everything finally started to make sense.

With unix-like operating systems I also discovered workstations from Sun, SGI and others. There, I only confirmed my discovery that CPU clock or RAM size won't help you, if you use bad software. Since then, I stopped rushing for upgrades and spend most of my leisure time on computers that are generally considered too slow to be used daily. And I always got my work done, code written, pictures edited, texts written and music played. I don't want it any other way in the future.


Can we talk about our Lord and Saviour, Sir Clive Sinclair?

You may disagree, but that won't change the fact that Sinclair ZX Spectrum is the best computer in the world. Most of the other computers of that era were created for gaming or for business. They were packed with custom chips and therefore expensive. The original ZX Spectrum, the one with the infamous rubber keys, cost just a fraction of the price of other computers and anyone with a TV set and a tape player could use it.

And because its desing was so simple, it could be easily cloned, even in the not exactly progressive and developed economies of then so called socialist states of Eastern Europe. And that's how we got our first computer experience here. My first computer was a Didaktik Gama, a Spectrum clone made 1987-1990 in Skalica (now Slovakia).

My ZX Spectrum compatible equipment

+----------------------------+------------------+
| COMPUTERS                  | STORAGE          |
|----------------------------+------------------|
| ZX Spectrum 48k            | MB-02+           |
| ZX Spectrum+               | divIDE 57b       |
| ZX Spectrum 128+           | divIDE 57c       |
| ZX Spectrum 128 +2         | divIDE 57c (kit) |
| ZX Spectrum 128 +2         | Didaktik D80     |
| ZX Spectrum 128 +2B        | DeltaDisk        |
| ZX Spectrum 128 +3         |------------------|
| ZX Evolution               | OTHER INTERFACES |
| Speccy 2010                |------------------|
| Didaktik Gama 1987 (black) | SiF + WiFi       |
| Didaktik Gama 1989 (gray)  | K-Mouse          |
| Didaktik Gama 1989 (gray)  | K-Mouse          |
| Didaktik Gama 1989 (gray)  | UR-4             |
| Didaktik M                 | D/A              |
+----------------------------+------------------+

What do you think about Geomyidae?

Gopher is an Internet protocol and a service, that predates the now most popular HTTP/WWW duo. As the latter prevailed and now is something like a synonym for the whole Internet, Gopher is often considered inferior and obsoleted. But that's a huge misinterpretation: Gopher wasn't some early and unsuccessful attempt to create a plain-text web, it was a way to unify access to on-line files across platforms by presenting them as something, that every platform - no matter how obscure - had: a menu.

Already established services, e.g. FTP, didn't do this. If you were a Macintosh user and connected to a Unix-based FTP server, you were presented with an unfamiliar file system structure, strange file types and even filename extensions. And had to cope with all that by yourself. With Gopher, the menu and the underlying operating system are completely independent. Every menu item has its type (text, picture, binary, etc.) and it's up to the Gopher client to decide what to do with it. The very first clients didn't do anything more than download the files and open them with appropriate local tools.

Of course, hypertext (in the HTTP/WWW sense of the term) offers much more by interlinking the documents from within, but that's a completely different story and a much higher level of data processing complexity. And as the world-wide-web evolved from quite a simple hypertext medium to a full-blown application platform, you need an up-to-date computer to use it.

Gopher, on the other hand, still stays the same and remains a viable way to get contemporary content to fairly old computers. There are numerous enthusiast-operated Gopher servers worldwide that offer news, weather information, access to Wikipedia, etc. And you don't need much to access it - the lowest config I was ever able to browse though gopherspace on, was a plain Amiga 600 with AmiTCP and the nice native Gopher client that translates Gopher menus to AmigaGuide format. But there are clients for even older hardware, for PC XT, for 8-bit computers...

Since 2011 I maintain my own Gopher server at i-logout.cz, which, among a lot of other things, contains my on-line journal (usually called phlog in the Gopher community). I decided to mirror it HERE, to be available for those who don't have a dedicated Gopher client and also as a mirror/backup. It's more than 200 kB of plaintext files in total, with posts on various, mostly (retro)computing topics. Enjoy it and if you like it, come to Gopher, there's much, much more!


Last update: 2021-02-16 16:30 CET