Wyvern Technologies was a Public Access UNIX System I built and operated from the late 1980's to the early 1990's, when it became a very large ISP with service in 120 cities in the US.

Lately I've been remembering how it all started and the hardware and software I built to provide services to a small group in Hampton Roads, Virginia. It was so much fun remembering, that I decided to rebuild it for my own satisfaction. I started collecting some old hardware and software and eventually patched together a system that reminds me very much of the later Wyvern systems.

At this point, I have a couple of working systems and a lot of the old software built and running quite reliably. I'll talk about what I hope to do with it in another post.

Here's the first news(1) (does anyone still remember the news command?) article on the new system:

Welcome to Wyvern!

A little about the hardware and why this system is what it
is...

The purpose of this system is threefold:

o To provide a useful service to some users.
o To reproduce as faithfully as is reasonable the environ-
ment of an old Public Access UNIX system, including both
the hardware and the software.
o To have fun, including both the users, and the owners.

So with that out of the way, you might understand why the
hardware is so ancient sounding. Here's what we've got:

o An old ISA/PCI Pentium III 625MHz PC
o 128MB RAM
o A Buslogic BT946C PCI SCSI card
o A 3COM 3C509B ISA ethernet card
o A 4.2GB primary SCSI drive
o A 2.1GB secondary SCSI drive
o A Toshiba SCSI 12x CD-ROM
o A Tandberg SCSI QIC550 streaming tape drive

There is now a second, similar machine. They are sitting on a private network along with a newer server that spans the public network and the private, acting as a gateway for telnet logins to the old boxes and for relaying email to them from the public network. Everything seems to be working smoothly and it's about time to add some more features to the systems.

I'll post again soon about the software that I have running on these systems.