The ware for February, 2007 is shown below. Click on the picture for a much larger version.

I have had this ware since I was a wee lad, since I was probably just over a decade old, but to this day I don’t know what it does. I used to hang it over my Apple ][ in the basement where I would hack late into the night, writing assembly and BASIC code to control little hand-built robots and voice synthesizer cards. Clearly, the ware is from a DEC machine of some type, but I don’t know which one or what it does. I figured maybe this would be the right place to get answers to such mysteries from my youth, so here it is! Hopefully someone will be able to tell me what this relic did.

The winner of last month’s name that ware is Karl, who nailed it in the first post, and very helpfully followed up with the plaintext of his md5sum’d answers, which made judging a lot easier. Congrats, and email me to get your prize!

Last month’s ware was indeed my digital tachometer for my old ’92 Toyota Corolla. The lead-acid battery pack was used during testing before I opened a hole in the console to tap power for the device. Does it look improvised? Yes. Sinister? No. Is it a bomb? No.

That thing was a lot of fun. A firware revision on the tach actually plotted along the bottom a time-history graph of the engine RPM, so you could see how quickly and efficiently you were shifting. The police officers also found it pretty interesting as well. I would get pulled over sometimes just because the officer was curious, and then he’d give it a chuckle and send me on my way because he knew I was “one of those MIT guys”. I had been thinking about putting one of these in my current car, but I just haven’t had the time to get under the hood and hack it (and I suppose now I run the risk of being pegged as a terrorist and whisked off to Guantanamo Bay). I think if I were to make one again, I would still use a VFD. There’s just something timeless about a Vacuum Fluorescent Display. Fortunately, it looks like Noritake still makes them. Actually, now that ODB-II is prevalent, I probably don’t even have to get under the hood anymore. Bonneville, here I come!…oh wait, I have to ship chumbys first…

Some readers might be interested in this SecurityFocus BugTraq disclosing a vulnerability in the Xbox360 Hypervisor, enabling the execution of arbitrary code. It’s quite an interesting read and it’s an elegantly executed hack. It is also a great example of how difficult it is to build a secure system, even with powerful techniques in place such as a Hypervisor and hardware encrypted/hashed RAM. To wit, this vulnerability does not lessen the noteworthy accomplishment of the Xbox360 security architects; they tackled a very difficult problem and executed their solution almost flawlessly.

Thanks to the little birdies outside my window who told me about this link. :-)