Big W Consortium

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The History of BigW

Dates To Remember


    1996-MayA DECstation 3100 with 16 megs of RAM and two 100 meg hard drives, a former campus computer cluster workstation (ccon-bh.bh.andrew.cmu.edu), is purchased used from Carnegie Mellon University for $250 by Brighten Godfrey through Forest Godfrey, who was then finishing his freshman year at CMU. The DECstation is named "BigW". It's running a vintage installation of Ultrix.
    1997-MarBigW is hosted at Ripon High School as bigw.ngbert.org, now with 24 megs of RAM and an additional 500 meg hard drive. Accouts are given to friends and some RHS students.
    1997-Jun-02At the instigation of Jake Timmons and Dan Williams, BigW.org is purchased in the name of "The Big W Consortium" and assigned to the DECstation.
    1998-JunBigW.org switches to a Sun SPARC IPC with 12 megs of RAM and a 400 meg hard drive running Solaris 2.5.1. The box is hosted in Adrian Drury's dorm at Carnegie Mellon University. The old DECstation is sold to Morgan Welk.
    1998-AugThe IPC is upgraded to 36 megs of RAM and a 4 GB hard drive, now hosted in Forest and Brighten's dorm at CMU.
    1999-JanA Sparc LX with 32 megs of RAM and the IPC's 4 GB hard drive replaces the Sparc IPC.
    1999-MayDuring a brief period of downtime while the Sparc LX is moved between dorms at CMU, BigW.org is hosted from a Mac IIci running MachTen under Mac OS at Ripon College.
    1999-MayBigW.org is switched back to the Sparc LX hosted once again in Adrian Drury's dorm at CMU.
    1999-AugDuring downtime while the LX is moved, BigW.org is once again hosted breifly on the Mac IIci at Ripon College.
    1999-AugBigW.org is switched back to the LX, now in Brighten's dorm at CMU.
    2000-Janophelia.bigw.org, alias www2.bigw.org, becomes BigW.org's secondary server and the Commercial Division of the Big W Consortium. Ophelia.bigw.org is a Sparc 5/170 with a 2 gig hard drive and 64 megs of RAM, hosted in Forest's house in Eagan, MN on a DSL line.
    2000-May-16The LX sets its record uptime: 
    /> hostname
hamlet.res.cmu.edu
/> uptime
 10:09am  up 168 day(s),  1:12,  5 users,  load average: 0.09, 0.05, 0.03
    ...and is taken down to be moved to Minnesota. Ophelia.bigw.org temporarily becomes the primary BigW.org server.
    2000-Jun-01The LX, now also in Eagan, replaces Ophelia as the primary BigW.org server.
    2000 - 2002BigW is hosted by a Sparc LX in Eagan during the summers, and a Sparc LX in Brighten's dorm at CMU during the school year. Both systems run NetBSD.
    2002-Mar-01BigW has broken its previous record uptime of 168 days, and continues to break the record as long as it isn't rebooted. 
    bash-2.04$ hostname;uptime
bigw.res.cmu.edu
 1:46PM  up 175 days, 21:04, 7 users, load averages: 0.41, 0.23, 0.18
    Notice our load average is higher than in May 2000. That is because computers get slower as they age.
    2002-MayBrighten graduates from CMU, and BigW is moved to Eagan, to remain there indefinately.
    2003-June-24The good ol' Sparc LX keeps on running! 
    bash-2.04$ date;hostname;uptime
Tue Jun 24 03:45:46 CDT 2003
polonius.bigw.org
 3:45AM  up 405 days,  3:25, 7 users, load averages: 0.10, 0.15, 0.25
    2004-May-29BigW is upgraded to a PowerMac G3 300. The old BigW on the SPARCstation LX continued to run right up until the end and set the record for continuous uptime without a reboot. 
    Sat May 29 22:44:06 CDT 2004
polonius.bigw.org
10:44PM  up 745 days, 21:45, 2 users, load averages: 0.10, 0.09, 0.08
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