2024-09-23 Maintenance and overhaul update, pt 1: I've completed a number of things behind the scenes to improve the experience and scalability of the site. A monitor now triggers an alert whenever the site cannot be reached on the broader web. There may still be periods of downtime, but I'll be able to respond more quickly to restore service when it's out. Backups of the webserver's directory are now handled automatically, and an incremental storage scheme has been retroactively applied to the historical backup archive, relieving about 90GB of storage without any data forfeit. Historical backups are marginally more difficult to restore in full, though it's unlikely I will ever need or want to. I've created a script which translates any manyfacturer pages added to the existing Rolodex page and inserts the relevant data into the manufacturers table on the SQL server. Subtle additions were made so the animated favicon and footer images both render correctly on HiDPI displays. I'll need to consider the permanence of the stopgap menu image before spending time on it, but other images on the site are on my list to revise as well. On a more exciting front the server software has been upgraded, PHP/SQL have been installed and configured, and a replacement Active Rolodex has been created. I've built it from scratch so some minor inconsistencies may still need to be addressed when compared to the other pages on the site, but I'm excited to find a 34% reduction in data fetched by the browser with an appreciable increase in the amount of useful information served on the page. Behind the scenes I find an 89% reduction in the storage size on the server's disk. In the next phase I'll focus on importing the cards on the rolodex subpages to a cards table in SQL, building a system to retrieve this data with a similar scheme, and recreating other pages from scratch to finally eliminate useless remnants left behind by the March 2023 host migration. Eventually I'll be adding a search function to the Active Rolodex so that cards can be located far more easily. It remains a priority that these improvements are compatible with browsers of the Netscape 3 era, and so far no functionality has been lost. A second priority is that all data on the site can still be retrieved recursively via web crawl, so the existing HTML structure will eventually be replaced by a hard-coded query of all manufacturers (Active Rolodex), linked to PHP subpages with hard-coded queries of all cards by those manufacturers (not yet built.) Until built and tested the HTML structure will remain the default link for any reference to Rolodex, though I encourage you to play with the new one insofar as it works. As this phase's benchmark is being developed in parallel, the site version v0.4 designation will be assigned as a global variable, and redesigned pages will reflect it today, while historical static pages will remain v0.3. Progress toward v0.5 will not begin until all v0.3 instances are eradicated. I also have a number of photospreads in queue to add to the machines on Apple Computers as well as the Rolodex, so I may take breaks for some of these as well.
2024-08-10 My bandwidth to resume adding cards to the Rolodex has returned. The following manufacturers have been added: AST Research, FirmTek, FORE Systems, Macally, Morning Star Solutions, Scion, StreamLogic, YARC Systems. Additionally, cards have been added to the DayStar Digital, DigiDesign, Micron Technology, Newer Technology, Orange Micro, and Sonnet Technologies pages. SQL database progress has not been much, but this is still on the roadmap. Occasional additions have been made to the pages listed within Software Directory.
2024-03-05 This is the first update in nearly a year but progress has steadily returned over the past few months. Much of my available attention has been paid to relocating a family stronghold of over seventy years. Physically, the photo studio is operational in its new location, and lighting is marginally improved if any difference is noticaeable. Test shots have been validated, though no additonal hardware has yet been added to the Rolodex. Inventory is more than halfway organized, and only a few cards (mostly duplicates) were sold in transit. Most of the live updates since the past status entry have been made to the Index of Browser Versions page and the Windows XP Resource Page. My latest endeavor has been to migrate the Rolodex to an SQL database. The manufacturers table is already complete and is poised to serve the existing data on the index landing page. A table for cards will follow shortly. Though primary access will eventually migrate to a php-based design, the existing framework using static html pages for each manufacturer, served by a static html index page will not be removed, merely diminished from view. This way, crawlers will still have easy access to all data available to be served by the database for archival purposes. At time of writing, no reconfiguration has been done to the production Rolodex, but progress will be noted here as the database version becomes available.
2023-05-09 Most of the updates this past month have been to the IBM Bertha page, and some tangential rolodex pages such as Matrox, C2G, and a couple adapters on the unclaimed cards file. I also added the GTX 780 to the nVIDIA page, though I have quite a few more early PCIE-era ATI and nVIDIA cards to add as time allows. The PowerBook 500 page still needs the internals of the 550c display/clamshell added (and eventually photos of the revision A logic board if I procure one) but is otherwise complete. Though now a bit overdue, the site revision is now advanced to v0.3.
2023-03-16 Apologies for the downtime; the server should be in good shape for a while now. Returning to normal schedule: I've added more information to the T221 page following some preliminary tests with DP to HDMI 1.3 adapters. A few more cards have been added to the Rolodex and some formatting issues have been addressed. I've started to populate the Power Mac G3 page, and the 8500/8600 page has been created.
2023-03-03 The few pages which have been directly linked have so far been redirected manually, and I've configured a server level redirect for any of the legacy assets linked via the old uploads directory. Everything else up to this point has been mirrored instead of linked, which simplifies things. For now, I've adjusted the timeout to 35 seconds which improved reliability in Netscape, at least when loading over LAN.
2023-03-03 There is no remaining junk which renders visibly on any of the pages, though there is more to be done still. All of the PNGs were properly resized yesterday, though a few of the legacy pictures I never got back to updating this year were inline JPGs and were missed. I think it's best to leave them as placeholders to hasten my reshoots of those photos anyhow. Logistically this iteration of the site is no less production ready than the last one was, given it's v0.2 status. I'll need to implement some redirects for the few legacy links I may have shared, but otherwise nothing should be broken when I switch the NS records momentarily. I'm also putting some new color onto an old favicon.
2023-03-02 Lots of progress on sanitation today. Most of the scripting is removed from each page, and the legacy top menu has been entirely replaced by a dual-size image-mapped version which may not be final. All of the inline PNG files have been constrained to 936x936 pixels for mixed efficiency, and all images are now sorted into subfolders such as Apple systems, Rolodex entries, etc. Subpages are also reordered to more easily work on. So far, all links and previous functionality is preserved and optimized.
2023-03-01 Hosting has unexpectedly required my attention. I had plans to move the Knowledge Base to a more accessible host at a convenient point in the future, but the priority level has changed. By the time anyone knows where to read this, the domain will have been transferred to simplify the following test environment: This version of the site is now hosted independently of the existing site on jeremywork.com; It relies on an HTTP server behind port 1984, and for the moment can be accessed via http://framedecay.com which forwards to http://stormdecay.com:1984. All subsequent navigation remains on stormdecay:1984. Only this version of the site will receive updates from this point forward. The site currently hosted on jeremywork.com will remain live but stagnant until this version has been mostly sanitized. This version can be informally considered Knowledge Base v0.25 until the handoff is complete. v0.3 is hinging on only a couple project components; end of March seems reasonable. So far the only changes made to this version have been fixing a few image links broken by character limits, and a page where I accidentally used absolute hyperlinks for section jumps.
2023-02-15 Context has been shifting into place. I've added most of the ADC OEM cards from the G4 and G5 era to the ATI and nVidia pages in the Rolodex. I'm currently making quick progress in building out the PowerBook 500 page. There have also been many other entries to the Rolodex, and I've begun to assemble information about the T221 displays in a loose page for now. Eventually there will be more displays to add to a central page. Since the Apple rolodex page is getting a little long, I've begun to duplicate specific entries onto the machine pages they accompany (WGS Pisces card, IIci cache card, etc.)
2022-12-28 Many more entries have been added to the Rolodex, and I also added the Sixty Eight Thousand draft PDFs to their page, pending my eventual scanning them properly. The headers on the rolodex page now read 'Rolodex' instead of 'Index' and each link back to the main page as they should have originally. Specifics aside, this project has been in a state of consistent improvement for over a year now and I very much look forward to continuing; stay tuned.
2022-12-02 Most of the progress since the last update has been to expanding the Rolodex, though I've also managed to add the 6500/275 and its internals to their respective pages, establishing the first images on the Gazelle page. On a similar note, my aquisition of an earlier 120MHz example of the NuBus 603/LC board solidified the notion that those models should be consolidated to a single page. There are so many model designations for that design so the page becomes a bit messy, but it more uniformally represents the lineage from 580-640 > 5200-6300 > 5400-(6360,6400) > 5500-6500(TAM). I have several more machines in the queue with which to add motherboards and populate pages, so progress should continue at roughly the same pace for a while.
2022-10-28 I've pushed to update nearly all of the subpar photos on the Rolodex, and I've also recorded a first pass of all functioning NuBus video cards in the IIfx. The results are on the IIfx page as well as the NuBus Video rollup page, which may eventually be phased out in favor of appending results to individual card entries in the Rolodex. Though no additional formality has taken place, the structure of this site has taken a rigid enough form to promote the title from v0.1 to v0.2. This also marks the first instance of the site being externally linked, albeit by me, and non-prominently. More unpublished cards and motherboards are on hand, so additions will continue in the coming days.
2022-09-12 Newly created is the Performa page, as a subindex to avoid further cluttering the Apple computer systems page. I've made lots of progress in the push to update all the Rolodex photos. I've also added a few more logic boards, and assured each existant machine page older than G3 has at least CPU, Memory, and Machine ID populated. For the front logic board photos of IIcx and IIci, I've used a two photo composite. It's slightly noticeable at 1:1, but I'm quite pleased with the extra visibility of the silkscreen at the far edges. (A vertically mounted camera with relatively fixed lighting on an X/Y track could produce the perfect direct scan.) I don't plan on reextracting any boards explicitly to update photos, though I may choose to revise other photos this way alongside future maintenance. I also added a few more ROMs I missed before the TL866.
2022-08-31 I've acquired a TL866II Plus programmer and have begun to add more ROM dumps to the Rolodex. I haven't added any new pages or entries but many of the photos have been updated and some corrections were made to card descriptions.
2022-08-20 Added a couple PDF scans of installation manuals to the Rolodex. Also checked over the entire site from Netscape Communicator and adjusted some styling to better suit legacy platforms without affecting modern ones. Removed all null characters which appear as question marks on legacy browsers. If any have been missed I'll get back to them eventually. Reordered Status Nexus page so that latest updates appear near the top.
2022-07-29 I've continued adding cards and writing notes on the machine pages. For a select few cards the ROMs had previously been dumped using a TL866II and linked in the 'Identifying Numbers' sections for the corresponding entries in the rolodex; for example, see the Sixty Eight Thousand SCSI cards. I've also added board part numbers to the Macintosh machine pages where pictured.
2022-07-10 Added the first few logic board photos, linking each inline image with a [PS] quality 12 jpeg of the original collage. This seems to work well and I've applied it to some of the most recent entries to the Rolodex too. Eventually all should be linked this way, and much smaller JPGs should replace the PNGs inline. These higher quality collages utilized three light sources per shot and were geometrically normalised in PhotoShop.
<< any photos which do not hyperlink to a high-res jpeg should be considered out of date but not invalid >>
2022-06-05 Added another batch of cards to the rolodex, and a software landing page which I've begun sparsely populating. I've added a few pages to the Mac matrix mostly with information I'm acruing during an ongoing benchmarking session, the results from which will eventually be published somehow. For now it's being redacted and reformed on the fly, so to any who stumble upon this it would be best to consider anything on this site could be wrong. At this stage it's still mostly for my personal reference.
2022-05-15 Began adding informational pages mostly adapted from historical forum posts,
2021-12-20 Knowledge Base v0.1 is set up to establish basic comprehensive list of hardware. One landing page per manufacturer, one photo collage, brief description of function, model numbers, and chips present per card. This is largely compiled from memory and will be checked more thoroughly as the KB version approaches 1.0. Only devices tangibly within reach for now.
2024-08-10 My bandwidth to resume adding cards to the Rolodex has returned. The following manufacturers have been added: AST Research, FirmTek, FORE Systems, Macally, Morning Star Solutions, Scion, StreamLogic, YARC Systems. Additionally, cards have been added to the DayStar Digital, DigiDesign, Micron Technology, Newer Technology, Orange Micro, and Sonnet Technologies pages. SQL database progress has not been much, but this is still on the roadmap. Occasional additions have been made to the pages listed within Software Directory.
2024-03-05 This is the first update in nearly a year but progress has steadily returned over the past few months. Much of my available attention has been paid to relocating a family stronghold of over seventy years. Physically, the photo studio is operational in its new location, and lighting is marginally improved if any difference is noticaeable. Test shots have been validated, though no additonal hardware has yet been added to the Rolodex. Inventory is more than halfway organized, and only a few cards (mostly duplicates) were sold in transit. Most of the live updates since the past status entry have been made to the Index of Browser Versions page and the Windows XP Resource Page. My latest endeavor has been to migrate the Rolodex to an SQL database. The manufacturers table is already complete and is poised to serve the existing data on the index landing page. A table for cards will follow shortly. Though primary access will eventually migrate to a php-based design, the existing framework using static html pages for each manufacturer, served by a static html index page will not be removed, merely diminished from view. This way, crawlers will still have easy access to all data available to be served by the database for archival purposes. At time of writing, no reconfiguration has been done to the production Rolodex, but progress will be noted here as the database version becomes available.
2023-05-09 Most of the updates this past month have been to the IBM Bertha page, and some tangential rolodex pages such as Matrox, C2G, and a couple adapters on the unclaimed cards file. I also added the GTX 780 to the nVIDIA page, though I have quite a few more early PCIE-era ATI and nVIDIA cards to add as time allows. The PowerBook 500 page still needs the internals of the 550c display/clamshell added (and eventually photos of the revision A logic board if I procure one) but is otherwise complete. Though now a bit overdue, the site revision is now advanced to v0.3.
2023-03-16 Apologies for the downtime; the server should be in good shape for a while now. Returning to normal schedule: I've added more information to the T221 page following some preliminary tests with DP to HDMI 1.3 adapters. A few more cards have been added to the Rolodex and some formatting issues have been addressed. I've started to populate the Power Mac G3 page, and the 8500/8600 page has been created.
2023-03-03 The few pages which have been directly linked have so far been redirected manually, and I've configured a server level redirect for any of the legacy assets linked via the old uploads directory. Everything else up to this point has been mirrored instead of linked, which simplifies things. For now, I've adjusted the timeout to 35 seconds which improved reliability in Netscape, at least when loading over LAN.
2023-03-03 There is no remaining junk which renders visibly on any of the pages, though there is more to be done still. All of the PNGs were properly resized yesterday, though a few of the legacy pictures I never got back to updating this year were inline JPGs and were missed. I think it's best to leave them as placeholders to hasten my reshoots of those photos anyhow. Logistically this iteration of the site is no less production ready than the last one was, given it's v0.2 status. I'll need to implement some redirects for the few legacy links I may have shared, but otherwise nothing should be broken when I switch the NS records momentarily. I'm also putting some new color onto an old favicon.
2023-03-02 Lots of progress on sanitation today. Most of the scripting is removed from each page, and the legacy top menu has been entirely replaced by a dual-size image-mapped version which may not be final. All of the inline PNG files have been constrained to 936x936 pixels for mixed efficiency, and all images are now sorted into subfolders such as Apple systems, Rolodex entries, etc. Subpages are also reordered to more easily work on. So far, all links and previous functionality is preserved and optimized.
2023-03-01 Hosting has unexpectedly required my attention. I had plans to move the Knowledge Base to a more accessible host at a convenient point in the future, but the priority level has changed. By the time anyone knows where to read this, the domain will have been transferred to simplify the following test environment: This version of the site is now hosted independently of the existing site on jeremywork.com; It relies on an HTTP server behind port 1984, and for the moment can be accessed via http://framedecay.com which forwards to http://stormdecay.com:1984. All subsequent navigation remains on stormdecay:1984. Only this version of the site will receive updates from this point forward. The site currently hosted on jeremywork.com will remain live but stagnant until this version has been mostly sanitized. This version can be informally considered Knowledge Base v0.25 until the handoff is complete. v0.3 is hinging on only a couple project components; end of March seems reasonable. So far the only changes made to this version have been fixing a few image links broken by character limits, and a page where I accidentally used absolute hyperlinks for section jumps.
2023-02-15 Context has been shifting into place. I've added most of the ADC OEM cards from the G4 and G5 era to the ATI and nVidia pages in the Rolodex. I'm currently making quick progress in building out the PowerBook 500 page. There have also been many other entries to the Rolodex, and I've begun to assemble information about the T221 displays in a loose page for now. Eventually there will be more displays to add to a central page. Since the Apple rolodex page is getting a little long, I've begun to duplicate specific entries onto the machine pages they accompany (WGS Pisces card, IIci cache card, etc.)
2022-12-28 Many more entries have been added to the Rolodex, and I also added the Sixty Eight Thousand draft PDFs to their page, pending my eventual scanning them properly. The headers on the rolodex page now read 'Rolodex' instead of 'Index' and each link back to the main page as they should have originally. Specifics aside, this project has been in a state of consistent improvement for over a year now and I very much look forward to continuing; stay tuned.
2022-12-02 Most of the progress since the last update has been to expanding the Rolodex, though I've also managed to add the 6500/275 and its internals to their respective pages, establishing the first images on the Gazelle page. On a similar note, my aquisition of an earlier 120MHz example of the NuBus 603/LC board solidified the notion that those models should be consolidated to a single page. There are so many model designations for that design so the page becomes a bit messy, but it more uniformally represents the lineage from 580-640 > 5200-6300 > 5400-(6360,6400) > 5500-6500(TAM). I have several more machines in the queue with which to add motherboards and populate pages, so progress should continue at roughly the same pace for a while.
2022-10-28 I've pushed to update nearly all of the subpar photos on the Rolodex, and I've also recorded a first pass of all functioning NuBus video cards in the IIfx. The results are on the IIfx page as well as the NuBus Video rollup page, which may eventually be phased out in favor of appending results to individual card entries in the Rolodex. Though no additional formality has taken place, the structure of this site has taken a rigid enough form to promote the title from v0.1 to v0.2. This also marks the first instance of the site being externally linked, albeit by me, and non-prominently. More unpublished cards and motherboards are on hand, so additions will continue in the coming days.
2022-09-12 Newly created is the Performa page, as a subindex to avoid further cluttering the Apple computer systems page. I've made lots of progress in the push to update all the Rolodex photos. I've also added a few more logic boards, and assured each existant machine page older than G3 has at least CPU, Memory, and Machine ID populated. For the front logic board photos of IIcx and IIci, I've used a two photo composite. It's slightly noticeable at 1:1, but I'm quite pleased with the extra visibility of the silkscreen at the far edges. (A vertically mounted camera with relatively fixed lighting on an X/Y track could produce the perfect direct scan.) I don't plan on reextracting any boards explicitly to update photos, though I may choose to revise other photos this way alongside future maintenance. I also added a few more ROMs I missed before the TL866.
2022-08-31 I've acquired a TL866II Plus programmer and have begun to add more ROM dumps to the Rolodex. I haven't added any new pages or entries but many of the photos have been updated and some corrections were made to card descriptions.
2022-08-20 Added a couple PDF scans of installation manuals to the Rolodex. Also checked over the entire site from Netscape Communicator and adjusted some styling to better suit legacy platforms without affecting modern ones. Removed all null characters which appear as question marks on legacy browsers. If any have been missed I'll get back to them eventually. Reordered Status Nexus page so that latest updates appear near the top.
2022-07-29 I've continued adding cards and writing notes on the machine pages. For a select few cards the ROMs had previously been dumped using a TL866II and linked in the 'Identifying Numbers' sections for the corresponding entries in the rolodex; for example, see the Sixty Eight Thousand SCSI cards. I've also added board part numbers to the Macintosh machine pages where pictured.
2022-07-10 Added the first few logic board photos, linking each inline image with a [PS] quality 12 jpeg of the original collage. This seems to work well and I've applied it to some of the most recent entries to the Rolodex too. Eventually all should be linked this way, and much smaller JPGs should replace the PNGs inline. These higher quality collages utilized three light sources per shot and were geometrically normalised in PhotoShop.
<< any photos which do not hyperlink to a high-res jpeg should be considered out of date but not invalid >>
2022-06-05 Added another batch of cards to the rolodex, and a software landing page which I've begun sparsely populating. I've added a few pages to the Mac matrix mostly with information I'm acruing during an ongoing benchmarking session, the results from which will eventually be published somehow. For now it's being redacted and reformed on the fly, so to any who stumble upon this it would be best to consider anything on this site could be wrong. At this stage it's still mostly for my personal reference.
2022-05-15 Began adding informational pages mostly adapted from historical forum posts,
2021-12-20 Knowledge Base v0.1 is set up to establish basic comprehensive list of hardware. One landing page per manufacturer, one photo collage, brief description of function, model numbers, and chips present per card. This is largely compiled from memory and will be checked more thoroughly as the KB version approaches 1.0. Only devices tangibly within reach for now.
