User:Darkstar

Hi

My name is Michael and I'm a retro-computer enthusiast from Germany ;-)

I have a huge collection of old computers and workstations (SGI, Sun, DEC, HP, Apple, Commodore, IBM, ...) and I try to keep them in a working condition as much as possible (replacing/fixing broken hardware, swapping batteries, etc.)

Currently I don't have as much time as I'd like for tinkering around with these old boxes so I've shifted my interest more to collecting old software and operating systems and trying out stuff in virtual machines and emulators like SIMH.

I have a small(ish) but nice collection of original install media (mainly for SGI but also some IBM and DEC stuff) and dozens of gigabytes of old operating systems that I collected from every part of the internet.

Also, in my spare time, I like reverse-engineering and converting file formats, mainly for games.

I'm (semi-)active in ArchiveTeam and it's spin-off, the file-formats wiki, I founded the (now semi-defunct) ReWiki and I'm an active member of the BetaArchive Forums.

Also, I try to keep up with multiple open-source projects that have to do with retro-computing, retro-gaming and/or emulation, like ScummVM, Xoreos, Xenia, FUZIX, SimH, hercules, PCjs, PCem, DosBox and MAME.

Currently I'm trying to design a large, emulation-based retro-style network using SimH, DosBox, VirtualBox/VMware and DynaMIPS with multiple network segments, routing over different (simulated) network topologies and dozens of hosts. Linux with containers and virtual ethernet devices/bridges should make this possible...

I'm really trying to get into that whole "Mainframe" thing as well, but as someone who grew up with DOS, Windows and Linux, all the terminology and stuff turns out to be a very steep learning curve.