End of the year maintenance

The Color Classic Web Server is taking a little time off for some long overdue maintenance. See you again soon!

Recovering from recent weather event

The Color Classic web server was offline for several days due to recent weather events that interrupted power, internet, and water services for Austin, Texas, where the server is located.

Recovered Color Classic Web Server,

protocol HTTP,

time 02/23/2021 08:27:27,

estimated downtime 11760 minutes

Thankfully, those have been restored and the Color Classic web server is back online. Our uptime this  month will be lower than it has ever been, and your patience is appreciated while we were dark. 

Maintenance time again

Since we're sheltering in place in response to the COVID-19 virus I've decided to take the Color Classic web site offline to give the dear CC a spring cleaning.

We'll be back online soon. Stay safe.

Taking a break

The Color Classic web server is taking a short break from service. Please check back soon!

Uptime back on track

For many months the CC web server was unpredictably running out of memory and becoming non responsive or replying with "Too Busy" messages. 

Since MacHTTP is the only application running on the Color Classic this was a puzzler. I reduced system memory demands by removing nonessential control panels and extensions but the problem continued. 

I finally found the culprit and am posting the solution here in case another user gets into this condition. 

MacHTTP has an option called PIG_DELAY which allows it to dominate the demand for memory from other applications. At some point I had enabled this option thinking it would benefit the web server response times. 

By disabling PIG_DELAY the issue was resolved. MacHTTP runs happily now for weeks without any memory issues (previously I was restarting it daily to avoid the problem and keep it online).

The happy results were confirmed when I received my monthly uptime report:

Hopefully this translates into a better experience for all of the visitors to colorclassic.com

CC web server gets some maintenance

Image courtesy http://www.neogaf.com

The Color Classic web server software (MacHTTP) has been prone to running out of memory for several months now. You've probably noticed the dip in server uptime stats if you were paying attention. I didn't have time to troubleshoot it so I just set the CC to restart every night, but finally even that wasn't enough to make it happy.

 I finally hauled out the legacy tools (floppy disks, Iomega 100 MB SCSI ZIP drive) and spent an hour or so watching Dr. Norton work his magic and fix an assortment of issues, the most important being directory issues. Hopefully that will resolve the memory issues and the CC will be back to its trusty self.

 If it proves stable I may even be brave enough to hook up a Connectix QuickCam so you can watch the squirrels in my backyard as they gather acorns and pecans in preparation for winter.

Color Classic web server now powered by Google Fiber

The Color Classic web server relaunched on January 9, 2016 with a new link to the internet. Earlier this month I switched from Time Warner Cable internet service to Google Fiber after it just became available in our neighborhood. So if you notice things loading a little faster on the Color Classic web site, you know why!

CC offline while power is restored after storm

The Color Classic web server is temporarily offline while electricity is restored to our neighborhood after an April hailstorm with 50+ mph winds downed several power lines.

Should be back within a few hours after the Austin Energy crews get everything fixed up.

Color Classic server back online

The Color Classic web server is back online with a replacement logic board and floppy drive. I finally had time tonight to install the floppy drive and run Disk First Aid to repair the HDD and verify everything with Norton Disk Doctor (see above).

The original logic board was re-capped but continues to show the same symptom of no video, so for the time being I am running the CC with a logic board that came from a Color Classic that was originally used in Comal ISD. The students who used that Color Classic have long since graduated and gone on to careers and have kids of their own in school. Hopefully they are using MacBooks or iPads!

Color Classic falls victim to leaky caps

After nearly 20 years of service the Macintosh Color Classic that powers the Color Classic web server succumbed to the fate most common to vintage electronics: leaking capacitors. If you examine the picture of the logic board above you can see the evidence yourself - the dark areas around the three round capacitors in the upper right corner are the most telling.

The Color Classic web server has been extremely reliable until recently so when the picture disappeared last week I thought it might be related to the CRT. Swapping out the logic board with a replacement brought it back to life, and examining the original logic board revealed the telltale dull, dark areas around the capacitors that signify the aluminum capacitors have leaked their electrolyte onto the circuit board causing connections to fail and the computer to no longer work properly.

For an in-depth guide on how to fix this symptom yourself, check out this page from the 68kMLA Wiki that includes directions and replacement part numbers for those who can confidently perform soldering operations.

But fear not, the Color Classic web server will be back! The original board is currently being repaired by a professional and in the interim is temporarily online with a backup logic board. That board unfortunately has issues of its own, so uptime may suffer somewhat until the repaired board is reinstalled.

Meanwhile, I recently acquired another Color Classic with a Daystar PowerCache 33 accelerator and will be profiling it here soon. Stay tuned!

Happy New Year!

As 2011 comes to a close and 2012 is minutes away I wish everyone a wonderful New Year with much joy and happiness.

Did you know Apple had a design for a phone and a tablet in 1983? Neither did I. Check out the pictures on Jay Mug.

colorclassic.com domain moves to a new host

I recently transferred colorclassic.com from GoDaddy to DomainDiscover, an awesome registrar where all of my other domains are registered.

The transfer was smooth and quick but I forgot to set up news.colorclassic.com as a separate CNAME entry pointing to this blog so it's been offline for a few days. Hopefully things are back to normal and I can start sharing some interesting info about the Color Classic server's uptime and maintenance, as well as tips on creating your own retro Mac server!

Rolling blackouts in Texas force CC server offline

The winter weather affecting the nation has caused rolling blackouts in Texas as power companies are struggling to provide enough electricity to keep the state warm. Since the Color Classic server is not colocated in a server facility with backup generators it has spent several hours offline. Until the blackouts are over I am redirecting the domain to this address.

Most posts over at classicmacs.org

I've spent most of my time documenting my work with the Color Classics in my home at my related web site, classicmacs.org

That site includes other vintage Macs I've accumulated or am seeking for my collection of Classic Macs. Stop by if you have a chance and check it out!

January uptime: missed it by THAT much

The January uptime numbers for the Color Classic web server are in (courtesy of websitepulse.com) and with just a single failure to respond over 31 days we came as close as possible to 100% without getting there.

 

Spring has historically been a tough time for the CC web server since thunderstorms in Central Texas often cause temporary outages for the power, cable, or both, so that 100% uptime goal is a little harder to reach. Although it's connected to a UPS along with the cable modem and router the battery is only good for about half an hour.

2009 uptime for the Color Classic web server

2009 started off a bit rocky for uptime, as a combination of a flaky router and spring thunderstorms in central Texas combined to take the server offline when it lost its internet connection or electrical power. Replacing the router and adding a UPS improved uptime significantly as you can see from the bar graph below.

The final tally for 2009 as recorded by websitepulse.com (who kindly monitors this site for free!) is an uptime of just under 98%. While that's a remarkable statistic for a computer that's 16 years old operating on residential broadband internet connection, there's still room for for improvement. Here's hoping 2010 will bring uptime over the 99% average!

Color Classic Web Server - HTTP
Month	Total Checks	Fails	Avg resp.time	Uptime %
1 Jan - 31 Dec 2009	9054	196	3,563.72	97.84 %
Report generated on: 13 Jan 2010 Website Monitoring Data provided by WebSitePulse

Color Classic gets a new home

The Color Classic was offline briefly for a cleaning and a short move into another room at our residence. Instead of being located in our master bedroom (where the cable modem had been installed) it's now down the hallway in the office. I don't know how well I will be able to sleep without the gentle hum of the SCSI hard drive constantly in the background.

Before the move I took the opportunity to open it up, slide out the logic board, and carefully blow off two years worth of dust that had settled on the surface. I also vacuumed the interior, side vents, floppy drive opening, and fan slots on the back which all had quite an accumulation of dust, lint, and cat fur. Hopefully it will run a little cooler now.

Would you pay $5K for a Color Classic?

 In June, 2006 Maple Ridge Auctions sold a rare Macintosh Color Classic prototype with a translucent case on eBay. The winning bidder paid $4,999. Check out the beautiful pictures in this flickr set (photos are used by permission of Maple Ridge Auctions).

Back on track with uptime

Swapping out the router seems to have done the trick to get the Color Classic reliably back online. The downtime hasn't been the fault of the CC; the prior Netgear router would randomly "forget" it's port forwarding settings and instead of sending http requests to the web server on the Color Classic it would handle them with it's own internal web server that's used to configure the router settings.

Since I replaced it with the Linksys the server has been online nonstop for a week without issues, so hopefully we'll see another 100% month in the near future!

Router swapped to resolve network issue

The Netgear WGR614 that my local cable company gave me to enable wireless access with my internet service has an annoying habit of forgetting my directions to route incoming traffic on port 80 to the Color Classic Web Server. Instead, it sends incoming http connections to the admin page of the router, which is secured with a password, but isn't the destination that people are looking for.

As a result, uptime statistics for the CCWS for the month of January were almost below 90%. This evening I swapped out the Netgear with the Linksys WRT54G router I have used for a couple of years without this issue and hopefully uptime will become reliable again.