[Welcome to Floodgap Systems.]
Welcome to Floodgap Systems' website, hosted from Southern California, USA. My name is Cameron Kaiser, and I host Floodgap as my personal repository for information technology research, historical computing research, and open source software (especially for retrocomputing and information retrieval technologies); as a testbed for multiple hardware and networking projects; my work in medicine and life sciences; and as a resting place for my other non-technical collections and exhibits. I hope you'll find Floodgap as fun and useful to browse as it is for me to maintain.

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Among the services offered, I'm particularly proud of Floodgap's *retrocomputing and classic technology archive. I personally collect and support a diverse group of computers and peripherals of all kinds from the early 1970s to today, from simple early computers and training boards like the Commodore KIM-1, to video game systems like the Intellivision and Atari 2600, to home computers like the Tomy Tutor, Commodore 64 and Apple II, and all the way up to large enterprise workstations and server systems. Volunteer contributors have yielded immense historical information, such as the unique Commodore "secret weapons" from the company that was once practically synonymous with home computers, and Floodgap-maintained exhibits have appeared at multiple computer shows and gatherings, including the Vintage Computer Festival in San Jose, Calif. and others. My particular aim is not only keeping these systems operating, but also doing useful work, such as the multiple 68K-based Macintoshes running critical portions of the internal backbone, or the software offered for these systems, such as an open source 6502 cross assembler, or a vi-like editor for the C64, and multiple other projects in development.

Floodgap also houses a significant amount of archival and historical *information technology resources. Here at Floodgap, I host an extensive Gopherspace area, a unique, fast and useful pre-Web information exchange protocol, itemizing Gopher servers still in operation, offering client and server software and support, and maintaining the currently only operational Veronica gopher search engine in the world. To allow Gopher support even in browsers that don't support it, there's even Gopher->HTTP proxy support. I'm also proud of my fully functional Web recreation of the HyTELNET search system, an early and noteworthy attempt at unifying terminal-based search resources before the advent of the Web. I also research WAIS and other search technologies, classic multi-user operating systems, and experiment on scaling large enterprise-level tasks down to allow low-power computing systems to contribute as well as coexist.

[Temporary State Route 30, California's last Temporary highway.] Finally, in addition to the open source software and freeware maintained here, Floodgap also maintains a diverse range of other non-computer oriented resources. Along with a growing array of biology, medicine and life sciences resources, directly relevant to my actual day job for a change, I am also starting to put up some of my forays into gadget hacking and other kinds of hackery that might only involve computers obliquely but are still pretty fun. I also host a number of my *personal projects -- including non-technical historical collections, photographic exhibits and creative arts; as a budding roadgeek in particular, I'm fascinated by highways and I've collected some of my favourites at the Floodgap Roadgap, specializing in dead and historical routes as well as new and interesting ones alike.

* This relic of California signage history has been saved! Read about Temporary CA 30!

This brief description of what I'm hoping to offer through Floodgap probably doesn't do it justice; moreover, this site is in a state of chronic evolution as additional information and site sections are put up regularly. I hope you've enjoyed this little introduction. Please explore the site, have fun, and I would very much appreciate any E-mail with your comments and suggestions. -- Cameron Kaiser

Major site divisions: Official sites and common destinations: Gateways, proxies, non-WWW resources: See the Floodgap machines
Alphabetical site map

Most recent updates site-wide

Site news

  • (6 Feb 2024) Due to the severe storm that has affected California, multiple Floodgap services are off-line or not functioning normally. It may take several days to repair the damage.

  • (28 Jan 2021) Floodgap's domain registrar, Network Solutions, was exploited by a social engineering hack to cough up control of multiple domains, including Floodgap. This damage should now be repaired. In addition to internal discussions with NetSol, there are also high-frequency mutual assurance systems now running to immediately trigger an alert if another successful attack is mounted. This was purely a registrar attack; none of the local machines was penetrated or attacked, and no user data is stored on them in any case.

  • (14 Mar 2018) Floodgap is updating to enable HTTPS access. Most of the pages will be refreshed to properly handle HTTPS URLs. If your browser supports TLS 1.2, an upgrade button will appear if an unencrypted connection is detected on pages generated by the content management system. HSTS is supported for browsers that accept this header, with reduced timeframes for browsers that do not support TLS 1.2. All sites are secured by Let's Encrypt. HTTP unencrypted access will remain available indefinitely for machines not capable of at least TLS 1.0. However, a TLS 1.2-compliant browser is strongly recommended.

Floodgap endorses and uses hardware and operating systems from these manufacturers:
International Business Machines, Inc. and the AIX Development Group Apple Computer, Inc. Apple Computer, Inc. Operating Systems Group The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. Solbourne Computer, Inc. Commodore Business Machines, Inc.
Floodgap is entirely non-profit. Please do not abuse its resources.
Read the Terms of Service on how to be a good neighbour.
Our Terms of Service also includes our Privacy Policy.

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Copyright © 2000-2024 Cameron Kaiser.
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