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What happened to old-computers.com?

CommodoreZ

CommodoreZ

Experienced Member
Joined
May 18, 2007
Messages
180
Location
Z Labs.
Last week I noticed that old-computers.com was down. Then a day later, I was asked if I knew why. I started asking my other friends if they had heard anything -- nada. Considering it was an important web resource when I got into the hobby back in 2004, I'm curious if anyone knows what happened. Anyone here have a way to drop a line to Thierry Schembri or Olivier Boisseau outside of their email accounts on old-computers.com?
 
According to the register, the site shouldn't need to be renewed until March 2024.
 
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7bebd458-dfe9-4c35-beee-da10caaaa99b.jpg
 
Given that the connection times out, they may have hardware issues with their server(s).
 
I also have been wondering what happened to the website. Its latest wayback machine snapshot was in November.
 
The server was hacked and all the content was deleted. It was an old server with an old website, if I spend time restoring the backup, I am pretty sure it will be hacked again within the next 5 minutes, so... not really worth wasting time on it. Maybe I should just redirect all the pages to archive.org...
 
Hackers appear within minutes of a site going live, but still, it shouldn't be too hard to secure it with a modern web server and the old content.
 
SharpMZ said:
The server was hacked and all the content was deleted. It was an old server with an old website, if I spend time restoring the backup, I am pretty sure it will be hacked again within the next 5 minutes, so... not really worth wasting time on it. Maybe I should just redirect all the pages to archive.org...
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By any chance are you one of the two admins of the site?

If so, please know that even for an old website, it's beloved by many, and a modernized server instance with the same content would certainly be welcomed by many who have come to appreciate it.
 
SharpMZ said:
The server was hacked and all the content was deleted. It was an old server with an old website, if I spend time restoring the backup, I am pretty sure it will be hacked again within the next 5 minutes, so... not really worth wasting time on it. Maybe I should just redirect all the pages to archive.org...
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What's the point of letting the hackers win?

You know it was hacked, so you can close whatever backdoor was used.
 
Timo W. said:
What's the point of letting the hackers win?

You know it was hacked, so you can close whatever backdoor was used.
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So ... are you willing to "put your money where your mouth is" and re-host the site yourself with any/all necessary fixes plus a commitment to ongoing maintenance? It's easy to tell someone else to "go do it" but my sense is that @SharpMZ stated that "not really worth wasting [my] time on it". Swap "my" for "yours" :->. It's only about "letting the hackers win" if you/whomever isn't willing to put their skin in the game. IMO.
 
If it would be my website, of course I would. Also, it's not that in the moment the site went down, he no longer had the hosting and the costs for it to pay. To me, it seems more like he does not want to spend any of his time to get a website back online that many people did like and want to see again.

But here's the deal: coincidentally, I own old-computers.de, which redirects to my main website. I have no issue hosting the last snapshot of his site if he agrees and gives me access to the last backup. That is, if he actually is the person owning it... (which he has yet to prove)
 
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The site was coded in asp (with most of the code written in the early 2000's). It was hosted on an old pentium 2 with windows 2000 server until the server died in 2012, it was then replaced by a "new" one running windows server 2012. Unfortunately, because of lack of time, we never really update the site during the past 10/15 years. I tried to apply the regular microsoft patches when available (I don't think they still support 2012 server anymore btw), but there were probably lot of security issues with the way the site itself was built/coded, I guess it was not a concern back then in 2000, it certainly is now. There were probably also issues with the sql server database. I don't really know and I don't really have time to investigate (and to answer a previous post, I have no idea how it was hacked), and to be frank I am not really that interested in trying to fix 25 year old asp code. Olivier is in touch with some people who may or may not help to rebuild the thing from scratch, that will probably take forever (if it happens), in the meantime, I should probably redirect each url of the site to archive.org (until someone hacks the server again and kills the redirections).
 
SharpMZ said:
in the meantime, I should probably redirect each url of the site to archive.org (until someone hacks the server again and kills the redirections).
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Would virtual hosting a simple html frame page on a free/low cost ISP server that redirects all access to archive.org be an option? That way you wouldn't have to use an old computer/OS and the site would be back up pending a more complete solution.
 
acgs said:
Would virtual hosting a simple html frame page on a free/low cost ISP server that redirects all access to archive.org be an option? That way you wouldn't have to use an old computer/OS and the site would be back up pending a more complete solution.
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This could be an idea. I'll think about it this week end.
 
It would be a damn shame to see that site go dark. It was way too useful as a quick resource and it looked really nicely polished, even if new system entries and revisions had not happened in a long, long time.

Edited: I'm sure given its popularity that some would be willing to take the torch.
 
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pbirkel@gmail.com said:
So ... are you willing to "put your money where your mouth is" and re-host the site yourself with any/all necessary fixes plus a commitment to ongoing maintenance? It's easy to tell someone else to "go do it" but my sense is that @SharpMZ stated that "not really worth wasting [my] time on it". Swap "my" for "yours" :->. It's only about "letting the hackers win" if you/whomever isn't willing to put their skin in the game. IMO.
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if someone will send me the files i could try and host it on my freebsd machine at ovh, i'm fairly confident the skids wouldn't be able to escape a thick jail x)
 
It's absolutely miserable to think that someone would hack and destroy a historical website. What gain could there possibly be in this for anybody?

Some people just want to watch the world burn.
 
ajacocks said:
I also emailed Olivier directly, but haven't heard anything back.

- Alex
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As did I when it went dark initially, but those emails were part of old-computers.com so I don't know if they were also broken as a result.

famicomaster2 said:
It's absolutely miserable to think that someone would hack and destroy a historical website.
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I'm not sure if everyone here remembers when old-computers.com had both a forum section and a collectors area for users to post collections, and statuses on each item for tracking purposes. Both of those went away around the same time, and I'm told it was because of hackers then too. But that was 15+ years ago now, if memory serves, I never did hear the full story.
 
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