The Color Classic web server is back online after a quick round of Disk First Aid. Booting off a System 7.1 Disk Tools floppy and hearing the disk drive grind was a familiar sound I only hear a couple of times a year when I do maintenance like this. What a trip back in time!
The Color Classic web server remained online throughout Hurricane Ike and it’s aftermath, mostly because the hurricane never really affected Austin, turning east after making landfall.
But some recent fall thunderstorms caused power outages in the neighborhood which took the server offline briefly, and it is currently undergoing a hard drive directory rebuild which was required after so many sudden unexpected shutdowns. We should be back online very shortly.
Hurricane Ike is bearing down on Texas and there are more than a few predictions that parts of Austin may temporarily lose electricity as power lines are downed by high winds and falling tree limbs.
Although the Color Classic server is back on a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) and uses a very small amount of power it also requires a connection to the internet, which means that a downed Time Warner line that carries phone/video/internet services is also a concern. Regardless, once things are back to normal the Color Classic server will return to action.
The following news items originally appeared on the story.html page, but I finally realized it’s a lot easier to post items like this to a blog instead of manually editing HTML.
Aug 23, 2004 – Google found it!
Oct 28, 2004 – The Color Classic web server is cited in the “Vintage Apple News” area of MacMothership.com.
Dec 17, 2004 – On a lark I checked to see if the domain colorclassic.com was available. Amazingly it was. Minutes later it was mine, and now redirects to this server.
Mar 27, 2005 – Server stats from ExtremeTracking.com show that over 100 people a month visit this server. Amazingly, many are Windows users!
May 3, 2005 – a translucent green prototype of the Color Classic sells on eBay for $3,500.00 USD. Really.
Aug 3, 2005 – Ric Ford’s popular Macintouch site includes a link to The 68K Macintosh Web Server Directory site, where this site is listed third on the list. Traffic to the Color Classic Web Server skyrockets to 248 visitors in one day, and the Color Classic keeps on serving!
Oct. 25, 2005 – I noticed that even though the Color Classic never crashes and MacHTTP keeps chugging along, the number of HTTP timeouts seems to increase the longer the machine stays on. I’ve installed Karl Potte’s Keep It Up to automatically restart the Color Classic each night around midnight, and set up free web site monitoring through websitepulse.com to track the performance of the server and record uptime statistics. Big thanks to Karl for sending a 68k version of Keep It Up from his archives, and to websitepulse.com for the free service!
Feb. 12, 2006 – MacHTTP was inexplicably not answering web connections every few days, so it was time to take the Color Classic web server offline for some love and maintenance. Disk Warrior fixed some directory damage and hopefully we’re back to normal. Check out the spiffy new favicon in the location bar of your browser, generated by the very cool Favicon from Pics web site.
Feb. 20, 2006 – According to the websitepulse.com uptime monitor the colorclassic.com server was up 100% of last week, so it looks like the hard disk maintenance did the trick!
The Color Classic web server was offline for a couple of days recently. Our local electric company decided that the day we left for a weekend vacation would be the best one to install a new digital electric meter. Power was offline longer than the UPS could keep the cable modem, router, and Color Classic going, so I had to restart everything on my return. My Belkin UPS won’t turn on anymore, so it appears that the battery may need to be replaced.