"sallot.org" runs the linux kernel on a unique piece of hardware. My friend, Brian Roberts, and myself found the parts for it one day while "dumpster diving" behind "electronics plus" on S.W. 34th street.

The following is a photo account of the effort we put into setting up "sallot.org". We enlisted the aid of some other "smart geeks" from the university campus (Phil Chase assisted with porting the kernel, Keith Sanders ran interference, and Brian Graham poured the drinks).


[ Planning to port the code ] Here's a picture of me planning to port the kernel to the new hardware. As you can see, I used an older Macintosh SE to assist with planning the port. Afterall, everyone knows the Mac is a superior hardware platform...
[ Brian and Philip setting up sallot.org ] Here's a picture of Brian and Philip installing Linux on the machine that became "sallot.org". Due to the portable nature of the Linux kernel, we had no problems porting over to the Mark-1.
[ sallot.org ] This is a picture of the machine after we were finished setting it up and had linux running on it.

The machine sits in what used to be my laundry room.. Sandy is not happy about the footprint of the equipment, but that's nothing compared to the electric bill..

[ Main terminal ] This is a picture of the main terminal that we use to access the mark 1. It runs over a serial link at 300 baud. It is a little slow, but it is fully functional.
[ Brian, Philip, and I login! ] It's alive!!!!

Brian, Philip, and I are both impressed, and amazed, that it worked! But, even better than that, we were able to login as root and create a few accounts! Whew, success!
[ Teaching Sandy how to use PINE ] Well, the role of a sysadmin is never complete.. Just when you have the system up and running, it's time to teach your users how to use the system.

Here's a picture of Brian Graham teaching my wife, Sandy, how to log-in to the system and use PINE for e-mail. We prefer PINE because it's not Elm.
[ The next project ] The next project we're going to tackle is porting Linux to the Atari 800. There is already a port for the Atari ST (M68000 processor), but we would like to continue the trend and port to the 6502 based 800.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Atari 800, it was truly a masterpiece before it's time. It was capable of 320x192x16 color graphics back in 1979, something which the PC couldn't do until 1988. Oh well, that's a story for a different day..


Well, that's it for the information about what is behind "sallot.org". We hope that you have found the lesson on our successful port of the kernel valuable and informative.