On Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 12:04:23 AM UTC-4, David L. Mills wrote:
> Richard,
> Yes, the iron russ and dies, but the server name lives forever. The
> rackety.udel.edu server here has outlived the LSI-11 and generations of
> SPARC and Intel processors.
> Dave
> Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
> > David L. Mills wrote:
> >
> >> Gushi,
> >>
> >> Bitsy.mit.edu is alive, but not running NTP for whatever reason.
> >>
> >> Bitsy.udel.edu was among the first public timetellers in the world,
> >> including clepsydra.decwrl.com and fuzzball dcn1.arpa (128.4.1.1).
> >> They first chimed circa 1984. Of the three, only 128.4.1.1 has public
> >> chime, but now a Pentium called rackety.udel.edu.
> >>
> >> Dave
> >>
> >> Gushi wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Aug 14, 7:29 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber...@comcast.net>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Gushi wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Hey all,
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> I've frequently used the venerable old standby "bitsy.mit.edu" as an
> >>>>> NTP server -- it had an easy to remember name, and was more "neutral"
> >>>>> than time.windows.com or something similar. I also recall that it had
> >>>>> a fairly open access policy, and over time I had committed the IP
> >>>>> address (18.72.0.3) to memory.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> At the current time (no pun intended) I'm unable to get any NTP data
> >>>>> from it, and it's not on any of the lists -- has it been retired or
> >>>>> shuffled off? Or am I just crazy?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> -Dan Mahoney
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> The fact that it's not on any of the lists suggests that it's not a
> >>>> public server! The fact that you can't get any response to an NTP
> >>>> query
> >>>> suggests that it's not running ntpd.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for the tier-one diagnostic there.
> >>>
> >>> My hope was more to hear from people who had "gotten a memo" that I
> >>> had missed about its retirement, or possibly even hear from an MIT
> >>> admin who might have been able to answer. I had previously (for about
> >>> ten years) gotten valid ntp responses from that server.
> >
> >
> > Ten years is about three lifetimes in computer years. You can keep an
> > old box running for longer but many people don't run them even that long!
> >
> > Sooner or later you get to the point where the poor old thing can't run
> > something you want to run; the applications you need, need more RAM than
> > the box will hold or need more CPU cycles than the box can do. Then
> > it's a paper weight or a door stop!
> >
> > Bitsy may have found a place in the Computer History Museum. Or maybe a
> > place in a dumpster.
YES!!!