a * sy * lum n.

1. An institution for the care of the mentally ill or the aged.

2. A place that provides protection or saftey: REFUGE

What is it?

The Asylum is a computer, doubling as a home for slightly less than sane college students. It's a rather war-torn beast, and it's currently spec'd out as follows:

• intel 486DX/4-100 CPU
• 40MB RAM, 256K L2 Cache RAM
• DIAMOND Stealth64-DRAM Video Card (2MB)
• Generic old SVGA Monitor
• 3GB Seagate ST43400N SCSI-II HD, 420MB WD Caviar IDE HD
• adaptecAHA-2740 EISA SCSI controller
• 16-bit MAD-16 Sound Card (it sucks!)
• Two Serial, One Parallel ports.
• NE-2000 Ethernet Card

The beast, having traveled with me through hell and high water, is currently serving me faithfully as a Linux workstation in our household Ethernet network. It's server responsibilities have been taken over by another of my bizarre creations, Frankenstein.

So who is it that "Owns and Operates" it?

I, Joseph Zbiciak, am the chief person to blame for this monstrosity. It's my lack of sanity that's reflected through The Asylum's being. I'm currently an Electrical Engineering major here at Bradley University trying to retain my last grip on reality, and am doing so by making a home in The Asylum.

Who are the other "Inmates?"

I have two other roommates that share The Asylum with me. They too are Electrical Engineering majors here.
• Arturo Pinzon is the person who is actually renting this place to us.
• Mohal Kokal is my other roommate.
Both of them share the same attachment to computers that I have. So, we have gone and wired our house with Ethernet. The three of us do Internet Consulting on an independant basis from time to time.

So what's this "Ethernet" thing you guys got?

Ethernet, or more specifically, 10BASE-T, is a rather convenient way for us to provide fast (10MBit) links between a growing number of computers in our house, while still allowing us a little flexibility in how we organize things.

My box acted as the primary server, giving the network a link to the Internet. Currently, Frankenstein is taking its place. The rest of the boxes use Franky as a proxy for the rest of the world. Right now, our network consists of the following conglomeration:

• The Asylum -- formerly the main server
• Frankenstein -- The new main server
• Arturo's Generic 486DX4/100.
• Jeff Durand's Generic Pentium-100
• An AT&T 620 "layers compatible" terminal. A good terminal (but kinda slow).
• A sun 386i-250 Workstation. Kinduva slow, lumbering beast. (Currently it's out of commission in need of a NVRAM.)
More hardware is being added all the time, as well. It's a really dynamic place.

So, anyway, that's The Asylum and its crew. Make yourself at home, and we hope you enjoy your stay.