When I decided to start awaitinginspiration.com one of the first things I started to work on was hosting for the domain, since I was on a limited budget for the project I decided to host the domain myself rather then pay for hosting. The only thing I needed was a computer that I could use as a web server. Normally, getting my hands on a computer wouldn’t be a problem as I generally have at least one old system lying around. However, at the time my surplus of spare computers was limited; I had a couple of computers that I could have used but they were all dedicated to other tasks and I needed a dedicated system for the web server.
When cleaning out my garage I came across an old Tandy 102 Portable Computer. It didn’t occur to me at first, but later I wondered if somehow I could use the Tandy 102 as my web server. I started to take a look at the system and realized that being manufactured in 1987 it was never conceived that someone might want to use the Tandy 102 as a web server for their blog. There were some definite problems that had to be overcome:
- Very limited memory – 32K
- Very limited storage – but it has an interface for a tape drive
- No Ethernet port – but it has a modem
Through some trial and error I was able to interface a standard 80GB IDE hard drive with the tape drive port on the Tandy 102, I thought about using a flash drive which may have been easier to interface but I wouldn’t have gotten the storage I need. Getting the phone port (modem) interfaced with an Ethernet port was a bit more complicated but I was able to do it eventually. To get passed the memory constraints of the Tandy 102 I interfaced a 1GB USB flash drive to supplement its 32K. I decided early on in the project to use Ubuntu as the Linux distro, this made setting up the LAMP server easy as Ubuntu has a server distribution that has an automatic LAMP install. It took some doing but eventually I was able to get Ubuntu installed on the hard drive and get the Tandy 102 to boot form the hard drive.
After some configuration of the LAMP server I installed WordPress, configured the DNS settings for the domain to point to my home’s public IP address and the server was live. Overall I’m quite pleased with its performance at only 2Mhz it serves the site pretty well. It also has low power consumption and can run off 4 AA batteries for hours – built in UPS!
photo goodness: (click on image for full size)
Wow you are so smart!!! How do you come up with these amazing things…
That’s pretty awesome! I’m impressed.
@Christopher Collins
Thanks – you should take note of the date of this post.
Pretty amazing! If anyone wants to dupicate this I’d like to sell them my Tandy 102.
@ Kathleen
Thanks for the comment you should take note of the date of this post.
Ok, we’re sufficently impressed…
Now; Where are the schematics??
@ Ray Gordon
I’m honored that someone from club100.org would find this post impressive… Unfortunately, I do not have schematics; but I can give you a brief tutorial on how to make one yourself:
1. Take and old IDE connector and solder a bunch of stripped CAT5 or telco wire to it. Colorful wire works best.
2. Take the IDE connector with CAT5 wire attached and plug it into the back of the Tandy 102.
3. Take some more stripped CAT5 cable and shove it into the phone and cassette ports of the Tandy 102.
4. Take the other ends of all the wires and shove them into an enclosure of your choice – though I would not recommend a clear enclosure.
5. Velcro a hard drive to the top of you enclosure, add some data, power and network connections in a believable but not necessarily working manner.
6. On your Tandy type various characters that replicate the OS and software you want the Tandy to run.
7. Profit.
Thanks for taking the time to comment and I hope my brief tutorial helps you build you own.
That’s hilarious. You had me going for a second. (until the bit about interfacing the hard drive)
All jokes aside though, it really is possible to serve webpages with computers of similar hardware. I’m not sure if it’s been done with the 102 yet, but it is certainly possible.
And yes, I do know that this post is very old.
@Hmbrew
I’m sure it’s possible (probably less than practical), I know there are smart people with a lot of time on their hands who have done same crazy things with old Tandys. I’d check out Club 100. They have good info there.