The 1st Linux/68k meeting in Oldenburg

Very much like the meeting we held in Solingen the year before, this meeting was intended to bring programmers together for quick&good solutions to problems, seeign the faces behind the e-mail addresses, and in general for having fun.

This is a list of the people who attended the meeting:

Benjamin Lorenz
Torsten Scherer
Thorsten Flöck
Geert Uytterhoeven
Peter de Schrijver
Markus Illenseer
Jes Soerensen
Flemming Steffensen
Jörg Dorchain
Arno Griffioen
Jörg Mayer
Günther Kelleter
Ingo Wilken
Frank Neumann

Arno (with phone, Atari and Amiga owner), Geert (Amiga) and Thorsten (Atari) discussing some cross-platform problem.

In this case, it's Benni's TT, which appeared to me somehow impressive - maybe it's because of its general size (I think it was larger than a typical PC bigtower case), or maybe I just didn't yet see enough PeeCees by then.

Torsten Scherer used the meeting to connect his Atari to another one which Arno brought with him and continued working on his serial driver for the SCC port. As far as I know, this driver is now in use by several Atarian linuxers with great success. Behind him you see Markus Illenseer, not Linux user, but NetBSD-Amiga.

Ingo 'Nobody' Wilken, in his typical gesture when exposed to daylight (or, in this case, the flashlight of my camera). One day, we should really print & produce those T-shirts labelled:

Contents: 1 computer scientist. Store at a dark place. Do not expose to light or fresh air.

It could become a bestseller. :-)

Jörg has maintained the Linux/m68k FAQ for quite a while before he finished his studies and had to begin real life. Here we see him sitting at the firewall/gateway machine (actually networks always seemed to be his main focus of interest - he's now at a german company called 'Telemation', where he does Cisco business etc).

Jörg Dorchain and Jörg Mayer, talking to our SysAdmin of most of the machines in the C.S. department at the university, Jörg Lehners. Wow, that makes a total of 3 Jörgs in one place! :-)

The red-haired guy is Flemming Steffensen, who came together with Jes. We somehow convinced him that Linux is really great, though I don't know if he still uses it.

I just had to take this photo as it gives such a nice impression of an extreme difference in size - Geert, on the left, and Jes. Well, I did know Jes was tall, but not that tall. :-)

...the bug that's been nagging you all the time, but I won't tell you. Hehe. }:->

Hm, I can't think of any more footers to type under these images.

Markus Illenseer, working for Peacock, had taken a handful of harddisks with him which made some of us drool: 8 GB in 3 1/2" weren't as cheap in summer of '96 as they are now!

Watching him, you can see some local NetBSD fanatics, from left to right: Christian 'cosinus' Stelter, Andreas 'atte' Gelhausen and Klaus 'gizmo' Weber.

Jörg Dorchain (left) brought with him the PC which we used as the gateway / firewall machine (our computing centre only gave me 4 IP addresses, so we decided to use IP masquerading to connect our local network to the outer world). It worked out just fine. If you are interested in the configuration, I think I can dig it out for you. I have it, somewhere here *digging*.

Good programmers need good food. The first evening we went to a turkish, nearby restaurant, and the second evening I took my guests to Oldenburg's city center, where we ate in the 'Markt 4' (they do quite good Hamburgers etc.). Unfortunately, every year in summer there is something called 'culture summer' in Oldenburg's center, and this was one of those nights, with the streets crowded with people. This also meant a lot of traffic in the restaurant, and the waiter had a real hard time following our requests.

People start to become nervous. Some get their meal as requested, some don't get they drinks, some don't get the extras they asked for (I think Flemming was one of them). Well, after all it was funny. :-} I'll try to avoid that restaurant next time we meet.

In the end, I believe almost everybody got what he asked for (except Flemming and me). Well, and perhaps the waiter got a collapse after this evening. :-)

His machine had died very early (some serial port problems? Can't remember, someone please enligten me on this!). On Saturday we tried to find a dealer where he could get a replacement chip and a socket, but in the end this was all to no avail (well, in the end we DID get the socket - one dealer gave us an old 286 motherboard that we could disassemble, but he still didn't manage to get the machine working until Sunday).

This is the heart of Benni's machine. I believe the image is too coarse to distinguish, but there are some empty spots on the PCB now where once some sockets & chips lived. Also, some cables obviously got cut in half.

Benni's machine, now completely disassembled. By the way - it's funny to see how often people see a need to unscrew their machines just during a meeting. Usually, those boxes stand on the desktop, being closed for months, but as soon as you go to a meeting - *plop* you open them up. Sounds similar to those car drivers who always see a need to present their 'babies' in public. ;^)

At the end of the meeting, this sort of photo is always obligatory. For a complete list of names, see the next photo.

And once again, the whole crew. Names are as follows:

Top row, from left to right:

Flemming Steffensen, Jörg Dorchain, Jes Soerensen, Markus Illenseer, Geert Uytterhoeven, Thorsten Flöck, Torsten Scherer, Benjamin Lorenz

Bottom row, from left to right:

Frank Neumann (ha, me!), Arno Griffioen, Jörg Mayer, Ingo Wilken, Peter de Schrijver, Günther Kelleter

Oh, one thing more - some people asked for the image that I used to print the T-shirts. Well, here it is, either the PNG image (see the PNG home page). This one is losslessly compressed, while the JPEG image is a more commonly used format, though slightly lossy.

I declare those images as Public Domain - do with them whatever you want (well, the penguin is of course not by me). Though, if you print T-shirts from this, I'd like to at least hear about it. It makes me feel good. :-)

I enjoyed the meeting - I hope everyone else did. A second meeting is planned for '97 (click here for information), and I hope to see most of you there again (and more!).

Special thanks go to the following persons for helping me in planning, organizing etc.:

• Horst Rummel, for getting me in contact with the chief of the library, Mr. Havekost
• Mr. Havekost for making the meeting possible in the rooms of the library.
• Mr. Brause, who only taught operating systems at our university for just one short semester. He was the 'supporting professor' for this meeting and signed a corresponding paper which stated that the meeting has connections to the contents of C.S. studies etc.
• Dirk Menz, who got us into the network. As far as I remember, we had some 150 MB of data flowing outward during those 2 days, but almost 2 GB coming in (someone mirrored X11 etc. :-)
• ...and anyone else I might have forgotten. Thank you!

Back to my home page.

Frank Neumann (Franky) E-Mail: Frank Neumann@informatik.uni-oldenburg.de / June 1997