It’s dead Jim

( mtlgeek.synchro.net is down)

So after 11 years of service this poor power supply (on the picture) fried, I had to do a shutdown for an update, when i turned it back on everything was fine, but after like 10 min. “SCrihhhhhhhhhHHHH” and a bad smell (known as “Blue smoke” see the : Blue Smoke Theory) invaded that room.

This old Pentum II 450 as been in operation since 1998. So very antiquated.

So I don’t know what I’m going to do. I was also using this server at home for storage. (this old box has more that 750GB for storage capacity) so it also was the multimedia server too. The data is safe so I’m not freaking out.  But I wonder if I’ll still be hosting a BBS, days have changed even from the 2002 when I restarted it (use to have one in the 80’s) . The thing is that in fact the scene is still very somehow active (check synchro.net for example) but yet I feel it’s fading a bit more faster lately.

With technologies like E107, yaBB someone could easily maintain a web board that would be quite similar to forums on an old text based BBS. And it could easily be hosted instead of having to dedicate a box at home for the same purpose. Any hosting with PHP/MySql would do.

The only thing right now tjat i can’t duplicate is Tradewars, it need a windows box. But I didn’t promote it much anyway because i wasn’t sure about the future of this box and if this game was still relevant. I don’t have much player for “The Legend Of The Green Dragon” and it’s simpler to access being web based and all. I feel that if it’s not a game based on facebook it doesn’t work. Sad! it feel like the web is getting too monolithic. I would like to believe that there is more to the web than google, gmail, twitter and facebook.

So I’ll see to get a replacement power supply for that box before next weekend, if there is more damage I’ll probably let it go, I probably could use an old laptop to do the same work, would take even less space. But i don’t know if I have the time and if people have the interest.

I’ll keep you posted.