Ancient Web: EINTR Kept OpenBSD Running on Unlikely Old Hardware

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

An obsolete computer is not necessarily finished. Sometimes it is just waiting for somebody sufficiently determined to boot a Unix-like operating system on it.

Visit Hugo Villeneuve-Lapointe's EINTR homepage.

The author dates his personal site to 2002 and openly describes its plain HTML as a tribute to 1994—while admitting he simply does not want to spend much time on fancy design. In 2026 he updated the name shown on the homepage to Hugo Villeneuve-Lapointe. The older material remains: hardware galleries, RS-232 serial documentation, and tables tracking OpenBSD's support for different processor families.

Boot messages make surprisingly good museum labels

A Compaq Presario 433 page records the gradual upgrading of an all-in-one 486 PC. Its original 486SX gave way first to a DX2 and later to an Evergreen-packaged AMD 5x86. The author describes the problem of getting OpenBSD running with only 20 MB of RAM, and preserves an actual boot transcript. It is not a claim that a current stock installation supports such a machine.

The SPARCclassic page numbers the connectors on a Sun workstation and preserves an OpenBSD 4.9 kernel log. A VAXstation 4000/60 page does the same for a DEC system, including console switches and an OpenBSD 3.6 startup record. These details let readers distinguish a computer that merely looks impressive in a photograph from one somebody actually configured and documented.

The RS-232 notes, whose copyright begins in 2002, explain serial communications from the point of view of someone who lost hours getting equipment to talk. The author candidly marks unfinished sections and asks readers to correct errors. A separate OpenBSD release table follows platform support over successive releases.

There is even a later preservation project: dungeon maps rescued from a defunct World of Warcraft Classic guide site after it disappeared in 2022. That sits alongside the older computing pages rather than replacing them.

EINTR is the personal web as maintenance record. Hardware ages; drivers change; forgotten connector arrangements become valuable again. The webmaster kept both the machines and their awkward details visible.

Explore the preserved system notes and serial resources.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.