[HN Gopher] This Website is hosted on an Casio fx-9750GII Calcul...
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This Website is hosted on an Casio fx-9750GII Calculator
Author : mritzmann
Score : 270 points
Date : 2021-07-12 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fxip.as203478.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (fxip.as203478.net)
| halotrope wrote:
| Correction: was hosted on an Casio fx-9750GII Calculator.
| chefkoch wrote:
| no https?
| z3t4 wrote:
| https is complicated and resource heavy (relative to plain http
| 1x).
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Savage
| eric__cartman wrote:
| you need at least an HP Prime for that
| vletal wrote:
| According to timestamps of comments here I came approx 12 minutes
| late. RIP Casio
| alias_neo wrote:
| Loaded for me just now.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| This is really cool, but these days I prefer to host on
| virtualized Casios so I can scale up if I need Casio FX perf or
| down if I need Casio Databank perf.
| akouri wrote:
| Needed this today, thank you.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| this is like firing the death star at a plucky little pod racer
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of
| voices suddenly cried out in curiosity and one was suddenly
| silenced."
| lovetocode wrote:
| Next post: how I burned my Casio calculator.
| ghalvatzakis wrote:
| Casio is on fire!!
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Better response times than other websites I browse... maybe they
| should upgrade to Casios.
| asmos7 wrote:
| down for me.
| laurent92 wrote:
| I wonder whether it would be fast if it ran some ancient web
| technology, such as CGI, .Net frameworks for the web or
| Filemaker web.
| munk-a wrote:
| I strongly suspect the webpage is entirely static and trying
| to run any sort of modern serverside framework would make it
| wail in protest - some simple dynamic elements using the
| native script might be doable though. It'd be neat to see if
| they could get a page counter up - just a dumb one that
| blindly increments the counter whenever any visit occurs.
| fsiefken wrote:
| we should all upgrade to gemini on casios, not sure if the
| processor is powerful enough to run the opentls encryption.
| perhaps a beowulf cluster can be made
| arkitaip wrote:
| Maybe we should all skip cloud platfoms and CDNs and buy a
| bunch of Casios instead.
| [deleted]
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| How many Casios can you fit in a U1 rack?
| Johnny555 wrote:
| The calculator's dimensions are: 21.3 x 87.5 x 180.5mm
|
| A 1U rack comes in various depths, let's assume 1m
| (1000mm), and the width between rails is about 450mm. 1U is
| around 44mm in height.
|
| So in 1U, you could stack them 2 high, 5 wide, and 5 deep
| (this leaves a little wiggle room for cables and such), or
| 50 per 1U, or 2100 in a 42U full rack.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Hah! That's production ready if you ask me.
| valvar wrote:
| Hm, maybe posting this to HN wasn't the best idea...?
| Firerouge wrote:
| Maybe we'll get a follow-up on hosting a distributed cluster of
| casios to handle global load balancing
| midasuni wrote:
| Back in my day it was a Beowulf cluster running on hot grits
| serving Natalie Portman pictures
| juanitolol wrote:
| lol
| marianov wrote:
| AWS Casio as a service.
| pletnes wrote:
| c4s?
| to11mtm wrote:
| Nawww, You'd want to call it Casiopeia (sic).
| nyadesu wrote:
| op just need to add some cache servers in front of it and
| it'll be fine, impressive
| TypeCaste wrote:
| Perhaps vertically scaling this on a Casio FX-CG50PRIZM is an
| option?
| kevincox wrote:
| In case it completely dies there are archives now available:
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210712193555/http://fxip.as2034...
|
| https://archive.is/5a44i
|
| Or the whole thing is small enough to fit in a comment:
| > GET / HTTP/1.1 > Host: fxip.as203478.net > User-
| Agent: curl/7.76.1 > Accept: */* > * Mark
| bundle as not supporting multiuse * HTTP 1.0, assume
| close after body < HTTP/1.0 200 OK < Server:
| uIP/1.0 http://www.sics.se/~adam/uip/ < Connection: close
| < Content-type: text/html < <!DOCTYPE html>
| <html> <head> <title>Casio fx-9750GII
| Webserver</title> <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.c
| om/css2?family=Lato&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">
| <style type="text/css"> * { margin: 0;
| padding: 0; } *:focus {
| outline: none; } *::-moz-focus-inner
| { border: 0; } body {
| background: #fafafa; font-family: "Lato", sans-serif;
| font-size: 100%; text-align: center; }
| a { color: #0075BF; }
| a:not(:hover):not(:focus):not(:active) { text-
| decoration: none; } </style> </head>
| <body> <br> <h1>Casio fx-9750GII
| Webserver</h1><br> Welcome! This page is hosted
| on an Casio fx-9750GII graphical calculator, running a SuperH
| SH4 processor.<br> It's running a port of the uIP TCP/IP
| stack, using SLIP over the 3pin 2.5mm serial port.<br>
| <br> <a href="https://github.com/Manawyrm/fxIP"
| target="_blank">Firmware (uIP port, webserver
| implementation)</a> <br><br> <img
| src="https://screenshot.tbspace.de/vfscewyjzir.jpg"
| style="width: 700px;"><br> <img
| src="https://screenshot.tbspace.de/ijlnydgsvkw.jpg"
| style="width: 700px;"><br> <i>(these pictures are not
| hosted on the calculator.)</i> <br><br> </body>
| </html
| amelius wrote:
| So most of the content (images, font) is hosted elsewhere ...
| luke2m wrote:
| Thanks.
| bguberfain wrote:
| Not anymore
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Doesn't this run on one of the CPUs Sega used in the Saturn or
| Dreamcast?
| whizzter wrote:
| Same as in the Dreamcast yes, albeit the Casio seems to be
| clocked far lower (29mhz in Casio vs 200mhz for DC). Also the
| memory seems a bit anemic at 60ish-kb vs 16mb main for the DC
| (+8mb videomem and 2mb audiomem).
|
| It was a fine CPU for the era with parallel instructions but
| also a fairly deep pipe compared to other contemporaries so it
| did best with a bit of hand tuning. (We worked on a DC game and
| Transform&Lighting loops needed hand optimizations iirc)
| opencl wrote:
| Not quite the same CPU but they're all based on the SuperH ISA.
| The 32X and Saturn both had dual SH-2s, Dreamcast had an SH-4,
| and Casio uses SH-3 and SH-4. The Dreamcast SH-4 has an FPU but
| the Casio one doesn't.
| H8crilA wrote:
| It's not any more. Please update the title.
| SirOibaf wrote:
| Looks like the Casio is not web scale :)
| literallyaduck wrote:
| They just need to add a casio load balancer.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| In 2030 I look forward to renting a casio for a web server
| instead and being happy about it.
| carrja99 wrote:
| Not anymore.
| aftbit wrote:
| The author's blog has a lot of interesting projects, though I did
| not find a writeup on this one. https://tbspace.de/
| xwdv wrote:
| Would an Apple Watch be a better place to host a website than a
| Casio?
| m2com wrote:
| Slow load, but after a minute it worked for me. Pretty cool!
| tarkin2 wrote:
| Yeah. I assumed it was hugged to death. But it does load.
| Albeit slowly.
| [deleted]
| sleepy_keita wrote:
| The author seems to have their own AS for "experimentation
| purposes" https://tbspace.de/as203478tbspacenetworks.html
|
| https://bgp.he.net/AS203478
|
| https://www.peeringdb.com/net/10981
|
| I've always been interested in doing something like this,
| although it's prohibitively expensive for me, even for IPv6-only.
| tiernano wrote:
| i got my V6 and V4 space, along with my ASN though Hostus.us
| (https://my.hostus.us/cart.php?gid=55). I use Vultr and a few
| other providers. For V6 only, you can get the ASN and V6 space
| for around $50 per year, and the vultr server is around $5 per
| month... my own ASN is under https://as204994.net with links to
| some providers and details...
| bswinnerton wrote:
| It can be relatively inexpensive, depending on which RIR you're
| using. There are providers like [Neptune
| Networks](https://neptunenetworks.org/) or
| [Vultr](https://www.vultr.com/) that you can peer with from a
| VPS so you don't need to get "proper" IP transit in a
| datacenter.
| max1cc wrote:
| In case it goes down: https://archive.is/5a44i
| bydo wrote:
| Wayback link:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210712193555/http://fxip.as203...
| bikamonki wrote:
| ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT
| drexlspivey wrote:
| hit ctrl + square root to reload
| pinacarlos90 wrote:
| This calculator got me through college. I then passed it down to
| my brother and it lasted him through college also.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| Time for your brother to consider setting up a webserver on it!
| /s
|
| The TI 80 series were more popular in my college days, perhaps
| these Casio's were more popular in another time or region?
| stordoff wrote:
| I think Casio calculators are quite popular in the UK - I
| used an fx570 through secondary school and university. It was
| the one recommended by my school, and then it was one of the
| three models (all Casio) allowed by my university[1]. I
| briefly had a TI83 for A-Level Further Maths, but I didn't
| use it much.
|
| The fx-9750 would have been usable at secondary school
| (though it's more powerful than what you really need), but it
| wasn't on my university's allowed list.
|
| [1] Currently you can use an fx 991, fx 115, or fx 570 for
| CS, and I pretty sure the list was the same whilst I was
| there - https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/teaching/exams/calculators
| mahathu wrote:
| Why did I click on this expecting a calculator out of all the
| possible servers would withstand HN's hug of death? Smart of the
| commenters here archiving it before it inevitably went down
| markzzerella wrote:
| Because static pages on a calculator likely to be more reliable
| and faster than whatever hipster stack is popular running on
| some VC funded pile of compute power across all of Amazon's
| datacenters.
| alecakin wrote:
| Did this get the hug of death?
| munk-a wrote:
| It looks like it may have briefly - but it loaded great for me.
| Semiapies wrote:
| Loaded for me!
|
| (Meanwhile, I got a "Can't serve requests that fast" from HN
| when I first tried to reply.)
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Looks like it's time to upgrade to a Casio server!
| dlsa wrote:
| All startups soon learn the importance of running server
| grade casios in production.
| Threeve303 wrote:
| The calculator likely exploded
| euroderf wrote:
| Maybe it logs to a daisy wheel printer ?
| mbroncano wrote:
| It seems to work!
| mmmuhd wrote:
| This is really inspiring as I have been eyeing my smart electric
| utility meter as the perfect candidate for running my portofolio
| website.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Make sure you set your TTLs high enough to account for the
| occasional late meter reading.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Well Casios are better than TI calculators.
|
| My current favorite calculator is Casio ES-115 PLUS2
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Casio-fx-115ESPLS2-Advanced-Scientifi...
|
| I like it because when you enter sin(pi/12) you get
| (sqrt(3)-1)/(2*sqrt(2)) in mathematical notation, which is really
| nice for a $16 calculator.
|
| Here I'm going to hurt TI: If you need a TI-84 or TI-89 for
| school, the place to get them cheap is shopgoodwill.com:
|
| https://www.shopgoodwill.com/Listings?st=ti-84%20plus&sg=&c=...
| parsecs wrote:
| Cleaned url: https://www.amazon.com/Casio-
| fx-115ESPLS2-Advanced-Scientifi...
|
| Thank you so much for pointing out fx-115ES PLUS2! I looked for
| a good hour yesterday trying to find an alternative to the
| fx-115ES PLUS (first edition) with the same features, after
| Casio discontinued the original. I'm honestly embarrassed that
| I had overlooked this...
|
| I do absolutely agree that Casio calculators are just wholly
| better than TI in general. Their menu driven interface is a
| game changer for me back in middle school. TI-36X Pro felt
| cumbersome and confusing, while fx-115ES was much more
| intuitive.
| emodendroket wrote:
| TI is pretty clearly just coasting on being the one mandated by
| a lot of schools; there's no way you can justify them still
| costing like $100 and having the same capabilities as when I
| was in high school.
| tititititi wrote:
| Your comment is like the XKCD from a decade ago that says the
| same thing, except not funny or original
|
| https://xkcd.com/768/
| krallja wrote:
| The new ones have rechargeable batteries, color screens, USB,
| and Python. So, only a decade out of date.
| imbuhuo wrote:
| TI still use really outdated hardware (some ARM9 thing) on
| their high-end nSpire models.
|
| With the same price even HP Prime G2 has way better
| hardware (NXP iMX6ULL, Cortex-A7, 256MB DDR3, USB EHCI OTG)
| and wide software spectrum (no Secure Boot enforced.) I've
| put full scale Linux and Windows ARM (arm32 IoT) on that
| platform.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I searched for graphing calculator apps on iOS the other day
| and found a ton that simply attempt to recreate the TI-84,
| e.g. [1].
|
| So anyone with high school kids: are they still buying $100
| physical calculators? Or are they just using free/cheap apps?
|
| [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/graphing-
| calculator-x84/id1247...
| brarsanmol wrote:
| Just graduated secondary school in April. Just as a someone
| said in a reply below, anything other than a physical
| calculator is still banned during assessments. There are
| tools like Desmos, GeoGebra, etc... that may be used by the
| instructor and students during lessons though. Although
| it's strange, there is no explicit rule provided by our
| Mathematics faculty that bans higher functioning
| calculators I've only seen one person carrying one.
| aquova wrote:
| I'm a few years out of high school, but during my time
| anything other than physical calculators were explicitly
| banned due to the potential for kids to be accessing the
| internet during exams. I even had a friend who won one of
| TI's higher end calculators at a math competition, only for
| him to be banned to use it during exams because of its
| higher capabilities. Perhaps things have changed in the
| post-Covid world.
| behnamoh wrote:
| "This website is hosted on a Casio..."
|
| Not anymore it isn't.
| nomel wrote:
| I really enjoy the HP calculators. RPN is much closer to how my
| brain perceives the equations.
| abawany wrote:
| Unfortunately they seem to have abandoned it on their newer
| models: I recently got a HP Prime and no RPN in sight afaict
| (https://www.hp.com/us-en/campaigns/prime-graphing-
| calculator...) .
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| >Well Casios are better than TI calculators.
|
| Agreed. For basic maths, the best scientific calculator is the
| fx83. The ES 115 is based on it. The graphics and controls and
| navigation is really good. Nothing comes close.
| walrus01 wrote:
| based on the hostname, although the httpd isn't answering, it
| makes me wonder if they also made the calculator speak BGP and
| take a full ipv4/ipv6 BGP table. Somehow with the RAM
| requirements I doubt it.
| gumby wrote:
| I'm kind of amazed that a calculator needs a processor as
| powerful as a SH4. If you had video out you could run Sega games
| on that thing.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Is this Casio colocated in a Hetzner datacenter?
| TravisHusky wrote:
| It is cheaper than AWS's Casio as a Service and for small sites
| you barely notice the difference.
| Yhippa wrote:
| > AWS's Casio as a Service
|
| AWS Cassiopeia
| munk-a wrote:
| Then again AWS's Casio as a Service is available in a HIPAA
| compliant form.
|
| Actually, HIPAA auditors would probably love a webserver
| running on a Casio since the hardware can be closely vetted
| and won't randomly change.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| If you use an an alt-CaaS you'll won't benefit from
| Infinidash integration, but then again you won't have the
| Infinidash configuration learning curve to deal with so it
| could still end up a net positive.
| tfehring wrote:
| Sure, but with fixed hardware resources you risk the site
| going down with traffic spikes like this, with AWS you have
| access to calculatorless options that can easily scale to
| handle increased request volume.
| munk-a wrote:
| Is that their competing product offering to match
| virtualizaled calculators delivered by hyperdivisor?
| rzzzt wrote:
| Pen and paper!
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| maybe he has reverse proxy to house because no public ip with
| ports for hosting?
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| I would argue it's not really hosted on the Casio then, since
| it's only static content the reverse proxy cache would hit
| 100% every time, except on TTL.
| gruez wrote:
| Maybe it's just a forwarding setup with no caching?
| narrator wrote:
| I have a soft spot in my heart for underpowered computers, but
| practically, I know this is kind of an unnatural fetish, and not
| really a healthy love. The little computer costs way more and
| consumes way more per watt than modern systems, and any minimal
| use case is better done via virtualization in a container on a
| more capable computer. Yet, the fetishism of all manner of
| obsolete, underpowered and wildly obsolete chip process
| technology remains!
| imoverclocked wrote:
| I mean, for its normal load it probably consumes far less
| overall power to service this content than anything else you
| would replace it with.
|
| From the tech specs: Batteries: 4x AAA Battery life: 230h
|
| From a Google search+answer: Energizer's AAA battery has a
| capacity of 1250 milliamp hours, or 1.87 watt-hours
|
| So 4 of those can power the device for 230 hours ... that's
| about 32mW. For reference, a RaspberryPi 2b idles at > 1W.
| tyingq wrote:
| Interesting. I still have a Jornada 680, which uses the Hitachi
| SH3 CPU (compared to this Casio's SH4). It came with Windows CE,
| but there was a Linux distro for it called Jlime.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jlime
| t8e56vd4ih wrote:
| pretty impressive for a guy who uses tabs!
| munk-a wrote:
| Assuming Casios can run links or some custom browser - does
| anyone want to grab a snapshot of this page being rendered on
| their calculator to complete the circle?
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(page generated 2021-07-12 23:00 UTC)