There was a significant mixup in communicating the boundaries for OCC 2026. I believed there were no rules, because it is what the event text said. It turns out there was an unwritten norm of no AI or LLM usage. Bummer! Moving on, I’ll be doing my own thing and not participating in OCC. Technology is not a purist activity to me. The lines blur. The way we interact with technology frequently melds into the next thing.
I cloned my Debian 13 libvirt template VM and named the clone “occ”. This’ll be where I run weird OBD-II code without careful analysis. You see, I decided to pivot away from SocketCAN/raw CAN and toward ELM327-based OBD-II diagnostics. Seems a bit easier to accomplish within the timebox. Besides, this way I can run ELM327-emulator in the VM, and run the DOS QEMU guest nested within the same VM. Keeps life simple.
The Old Computer Challenge started last Sunday. Have been real busy so all I’ve done so far is brainstorming ideas and research. If I had infinite time, I’d consider OpenVMS + CAN bus silliness. CAN bus, a.k.a. controller area network, is used to interconnect bits and pieces of car electronics. (Imagine plugging OpenVMS into your car for diagnostics!) Buuuut, OpenVMS has been hamstrung by HP corporate overlords’ action against the HP hobbyist community.