I feel I should clarify the OS 9 directory structure.:)
While the parent poster has done an excellent job of detailing the geneology of/Applications,/Library and/System, you might have noticed "Applications (Mac OS 9)", "Documents", and "System Folder" on the root disk of new macs. Those belong to the Classic Environment. As do "Desktop Folder" and "Temporary Items", which OS X refuses to hide for some reason- a fact that can make browsing shares on an OS X server kind of >. at times.
UNLIKE unix, you can move all that stuff that belongs to Classic into a folder and smack it somewhere- like ~/Documents/Classic if you want to keep it all to yourself. You might have to repoint where it launches from in the System Preferences, but beyond that, Classic doesn't care.
I have a powerbook g3 (pismo, 640 ram) and OS X takes so long to wake up from sleep that, well.... I never sleep the machine. Especially since the applications I run - Photoshop - take a veeeeeeery LONG time to pick up where they left off when sleep cycled.:|
Nothing quite like watching your battery meter slowly decrease while Photoshop SPODs..... and SPODs..... and SPODs....:-/
Try Jaguar on a 7300. Or Panther on a 9600. Or even Panther on a beige G3. For those of us who love Apple hardware, can't afford gear more recent than four years old, and want to get some UNIX out of it, Linux just blows OS X right out of the water.
Linux doesn't care about my video chipset. X11 DEs don't require 32 megs of VRAM. Linux runs inside of 128 megs of physical memory without difficulty. Fluxbox is just as responsive as OS 9 on the same hardware- something OS X still can't claim.
All that and here's the bag of chips: The Debian "Software Update" (apt) updates EVERY APPLICATION ON THE SYSTEM. Compare to OS X, where I get my Apple updates through SWU and have to download and install Adobe updates, new builds of BZFlag, new versions of Quicksilver, etceteras myself.
Not to say I don't have issues with various packages, but dear GODS Linux is far more useable on older hardware than OS X. On a general level- quality of applications and userland are a slightly different matter.
Man, I love that game. I still own my second copy, though the box is pretty worn out. Got it for cheap at Ames in the middle of nowhere. The game was fun- like, easily as much fun as The Legend of Zelda or The Secret of Mana. I put it up there with River City Ransom on my list of favorite NES games.
And for some reason, they never made a sequel, never made a SNES version, never made anything similar.:|
I've messed with MOL in the past- "messed with" being "couldn't get it to work on an iMac".:| Also, since it's technically MacOS running on top of Linux (eg, you boot linux and then MacOS inside of it)... MOL's existance kind of proves both of our points.
Man, if it's possible to run OS X on non-Apple PPC, totally hook me up with some links. I'm totally all about this from the geek factor- and possibly the economic standpoint as well.
To run MacOS requires a PPC. Not just ANY PPC, a Macintosh. That's ONE breed of computer. Just one.
To run Linux, you need a computer and some means of getting linux onto it. Linux runs on Sparcs, Ultras, SGIs, Alphas, x86, m68k, several different PPC variants, pdas, cel phones, the Game Cube, the Dreamcast, digital watches, and the IBM 390 mainframes.
Not only does linux run on practically everything, it handles almost identically across ALL of these architectures. Your debian experience won't be much different on an Ultra III than it will be on a Dell or a Macintosh G3 (aside from hardware support, obviously).
I can install linux on any computer I can find in the dumpster.
Every other OS on the planet (BSDs excepted) are much less portable and available on a vastly narrower variety of hardware.
So. DUH. Of COURSE it's a growth industry. Linux is popular on the x86- and there's got to be at least 10 PCs for every Mac, just in terms of volume of existing hardware. Linux will continue to gain marketshare because it isn't tied to any specific hardware, making the cost of entry incredibly, amazingly cheap.
By only supporting a dead OS with minimal marketshare- an OS I can troubleshoot from memory over the phone without even having a machine around for reference- I both greatly reduce the annoyance in my life, and greatly increase the value of the tech support I do give.
I've done work for free for some people, and they're quite happy. They make me dinner or take me out for a few drinks or something.
I've also done work for free for some people, and they're never happy- to the point of hassling me every time they see me because they need help with some piece of software (that has extensive documentation, installed), they did something I told them not to do and broke something, or, in general, are too thickheaded to learn for themselves and want me to do their thinking for them.
I much prefer the former type of person to the latter. Of the seven field users I support (people whom I've given computers to over the years), five of them only contact me when something is seriously broken, and the other two can't even find the help key on the keyboard unless I come to their house and phyiscally show it to them. Multiple times.
Then there's my dad.:D Fortunately, he still uses OS 9 and I can answer just about all of his questions from memory. The only time I've ever had to do serious tech support for him was when his preferences folder somehow got moved out of his system folder.... that was interesting.
Family's obviously a different matter than friends- I've minimized the damage to my sanity by only supporting OS 9. I patently refuse to deal with Windows in any capacity (it took several people a very long time to realize this), I don't support linux (I tell people how to get answers the same way I get them- google, a notebook, and a printer), and everyone I know running OS X is a self-sufficient operator.:-)
All in all, refusing to deal with Windows has saved me countless hours of free time (and work time!), and has even switched a couple of people over to Macintosh. Go figure.
Actually, I used one yesterday.:P My coworker's still trying to get the current Debian installer to boot off of the beast so I can ssh in and take care of the rest. o_o
Anyway.
The last time there was a Big Hardware Stink in my department was when said coworker built a box without a floppy- because we don't use them and didn't think we needed them.
WRONG!
The motherboard required a bios update, which required a DOS...... you guessed it.... FLOPPY. Gah.
Personally, I chalk it up as a quirk of the architecture. I'm happy with my Open Firmware- much less hassle to update (obviously, Apple controls the hardware AND the software).
Though I doubt most Mac users would know what to do with an OF prompt- it's a FORTH interpreter.
For all you froods who are all OMFGWTF WHAT IS THE POINT?!!!!!!!!!!!!!1, well... that's it.
Motherboard BIOS. Updates? DOS floppy or DOS onboard generally required. Not always, especially these days, but geeze. FreeDOS, I assume, will work just as well as DOS for this purpose.
I'm a Mac user and I know this! What's your excuse?;-D
Looks like I can actually get some use out of The Collection. I acquired two each of 6100, 7100, and 8100s and they've been gathering dust in the basement.... and 6100s are evil little pizza boxes.:D
Though I had to move our workplace linux server into testing to snag a netatalk revision that doesn't BARF on panther, and stable revisions don't do more than the Classic MacOS filename limitations.:| And then the size limitations- afpd doesn't like anything over two gigs in my experience.... and I have a few files in the 13-16 range (I do video). So we wound up using Samba and Netatalk on the box, and juggling between the two for data transfer.:P
Still, you can get the aforementioned anemic macs on ebay for 25-100$ (depending on options), and a newer box is going to be a bit pricier, even if it's a PC. I know if I buy an 8500 for 25$ that I'm not going to have to buy a second ethernet card for it, and if all I need is a DHCP server, hey... some people don't like to deal with a bios.:-)
You can get a basic idea of Panther performance in my own words here: http://www.secretaboutbox.com/museum/000098.php. It's a writeup of my workstation, which is a beige G3 with a 350 processor overclocked to 366, and 388 ram.
Basically, if you have a supported video card and enough ram, you'll be able to handle iChat, Safari, and Office fine. I browse the net with the machine reviewed above through a modem shared out on my iMac, and my only problem is that Safari hogs the entire connection- so it's load pages or type in IRC.:)
Anything more demanding than Office / internet (like video, games, photoshop), and you'll be tearing your hair out.
An important feature of OS X Server is the Server Administration tools. My own home server, which has the internal 6 meg ATI chipset (see above post in this thread) is a slug when I need to hit the gui. But I don't. Apple has provied Server Admin Tools with OS X Server, and the tools for Jag run very well under Panther client. These gui tools allow me to add users, manage shares, manage printers, quicktime streaming (if in use), configure Apache to an extent, DHCP, Netboot.... basically, everything you DO with a server that you don't do with client. And the tools can be installed on ANY machine running OS X. Load them up, they ask for a server IP or domain name. Enter it in, it asks for your password for the server (admin accounts only, naturally). And BLAM!
I have complete remote control of all of my server functions from my workstation, and the ones I can't access via the gui tools can be hit through the command line. With the older Server 1.x, you needed a web browser to manage shares, which was both interesting (the convienience) and annoying (security, you needed to be at ANOTHER MACHINE that WASN'T THE SERVER to do it).
Yeah, you can do hardcore awesome amounts of remote management with linux (I recently recompiled a kernel, formatted a RAID array, installed and set up samba, netatalk, and genrally completely configured a linux server from my desktop through a slew of terminal windows. SO SEXY OMG), but the gui tools for OS X are AWESOME for admins with limited command line fu- I got Jaguar Server up and completely configured just how I wanted it without help, compared to both of my monitors being strewn with google searches and man page entries with my linux configuration process. Some people don't want to do it the hard way, and can't afford the new toys.:-)
As for compatability and stability of G3 boards... I only had stability problems if I diddled with the defaults on the control software. So I didn't. I've run OS X, Linux, and MacOS 9.x on g3 upgraded machines, rock solid, without difficulties.
And concerning the 8 gig limit- that only affects Beige G3s and the original iMacs. And only on IDE drives. My workstation had to be partitioned (80g- 8/2/$), my iMac had to be partitioned (60g, 6/54), and my server didn't (9g SCA). It's an IDE thing, not a SCSI thing, and the old beige machines such as the 9600 are SCSI.:-) And I've never had problems with hard drives bigger than 8g running OS X on IDE host adapters- I had 10.1 installed on a 60g in a 9500 awhile back, and it was Just Fine. This is due entirely to the controller- the system sees it as a SCSI drive.:D
If you have a x100 lying around, or a 7200, your options consist of MKLinux or MacOS. Unless developers have made serious progress on that front, and personally, I can't imagine there being much motivation to do so.:)
The only major issue I've had with linux on older mac hardware is the usual X11 nightmare, specifically with motherboard video on 8500s/7300s. Back when it was a priority for me, the one x11 config I found was wrong. THAT was a fun experience....
Another issue I've had - which is largely due to the fact I'm a longtime mac user and used to things Just Working- is that the linuces I've tried on my hardware have a funny tendency to ignore SCSI cards or refuse to boot with certain hardware in place- I have an Orange Micro board that OS X cheerfully ignores, OS 9 sees without a problem, which makes Linux quite angry, which I find fairly amusing.
Then there's modem support.:D
Depending on your needs and hardware, you're definitely going to get a LOT more performance out of linux than you will with OS X on beige hardware- especially if you intend to actually use a GUI. In which case, well... X11 is a SPEED DEMON on a 7300's motherboard video compared to Jaguar.:-)
Heh. A 9500 only has two drive bays- three if you feel like ripping out the floppy and boring holes in the case with a dremel. When it comes to internal drive capacity, you want a 9600, 8600, or beige G3- all of which have internal tray capacity for five drives (one 3.5, then four in the front that are universal trays with mounts for floppy, zip, hard drive, and CDRom- you can easily drop out the floppy and smack in a hard drive). Alternatively, you can add a few firewire cards and load in several drives, but you're still limited by the system bus.:P
My home fileserver is a beige G3/266 with 256 megs of ram. Two IDE hard drives - a 60 and an 80- UWSCSI for an internal 4g disk, an Adaptec 29{3|4}0 card for the outboard 9g SCA drive that holds the OS, and an Apple rom 10/100 ethernet card. It's running 10.2 Server (10.2.0- I've never bothered to patch it up) and runs out basic file services to my home network. Runs like a champ, minus the initial pains in the arse of getting the OS actually ON. All of the SLOW one experiences in OS X is totally at the graphical userland level, in my experience- which isn't something the server uses. My workstation (also a biege G3, running Panther Client thanks to XPF) is a slug, and it has 128 more ram than the server... but I use it largely for gui stuff, and the OS is (UNFORTUNATELY) on an IDE drive- the big SCSI went into the server.:)
I could easily do the server on my 9600 with the Sonnet ATA/66 card that's in my 7300, but the ATA card seems to be a bit flaky, and the 9600's already running linux just fine....
Alternatively, I could toss on Server 1.1 without using XPF at all. It's neat to play with if you can find the media, although I personally wouldn't use it for anything other than Apple File Services.
It is less hassle to get 10.2 or 10.3 onto a beige mac, if you don't have much linux experience- but linux has this funny habit of supporting older hardware that OS X screams about.:D
Dunno what you'd be doing with them, but I bought an Indigo2 with the CD drive, a 2g hard drive, IRIX 6.5 installed, and 576 megs of ram for 100$ on ebay. The only thing I needed was a monitor converter. The machine is a 200mhz r10k, 64bit, solid impact graphics, built in ethernet. Given the fact that it's fairly beef for a base indigo2, I could resell it for a bit more than I paid for it. But it's this insane, eye-melting PURPLE and looks really cool!
I've seen o2s (the little speedbump things) for ~100$- usually with the NO HARD DRIVE OMFG!!!! stipulation, or the NO OS!!!!! stipulation- and IRIX media goes for an arm and a leg on ebay.:| According to hardcore SGIheads, Octanes are Freaking Cheap on ebay- cheap by SGI pricing- 400-600$ for a base unit, if you're lucky. Though 100$ seems to be the going rate for SGI systems on ebay- assuming you're willing to pay out the nose for shipping.
Given the price of PC hardware these days, your main reasons for an SGI would be the 1337 factor, and, as you said, the ton of CFD software that's available.
Me, I'm a graphics dweeb. I'll eventually get around to turning my indigo into a BZFlag box.:-)
Am I alone in thinking that is a singularly overbadged and MASSIVELY UGLY workstation? I remember when Sun badges were small- smaller than a fifty cent piece, and on the front of the unit only. They seem to have latched on to Apple's design aesthetic of logo integration and completely botched the implementation.:|
Out of the "high end" equipment on the market- G5s, SGI workstations, the super high-end PCs- Sun's current line of workstations are far and above the ugliest, most blatant eyesores. Aesthetics aside, there's some neat gear in the thing, but dear gods. It hurts my face! COULD THE SUN LOGO BE ANY BIGGER?!
That feature was originally in early seeds of Jaguar. I still have a developer preview somewhere that does exactly this- minimize in place, application icon attached to the window. Apple did it, they just axed it from the GM for some reason.
Honestly. They take care of themselves, for the most part- minus the User personality type that demands the Computer Guy to stop in once a week just so they'll stop whining about $whatever.
Some people will always have computer problems, no matter how idiot proof the machine is. Just about everybody that's whined at me uses Windows- and out of all of the computers I have, not a single one is x86.
I can't tell you how much pain and annoyance that one simple fact has saved me.
My family tried to suck me into supporting their hardware once, and were not the least bit pleased when I told them, flat out, that I Do Not Use And Consequently Do Not Support Windows. Pissed them off a bit, you might say. Friends would wind up for a Power Whine about how their laptop or desktop was sucking- and their faces would redden when I'd laugh at them and tell them to buy a Macintosh. Any time anyone would start to describe a computer problem to me, I would, simply, tell them "I don't {use|support} Windows".
The only problem with that is now instead of six people humping my leg once a week with Windows problems, I've got six people humping my leg twice a year with MacOS problems.:-/
No, really. It's one thing to stop in to do upgrades or routine maintenance (a friend of mine was the happiest camper EVER when I stopped in one day and doubled her processor speed with a spare part), but it's another when the people in question are abusing your goodwill- having you do their thinking for them, coming to you with problems and questions so routine the answers are practically written on the CASE, etceteras.
I've found that Being Nice, in about 30% of cases, leads to Being Dicked.:-/
Fortunately, people in remote locations (eg off of the busline I ride or outside of a five minute walk) have realized I'm quite simply Never Coming Over without compsensation.
XPostFacto will be updated to work with 10.3 when Darwin gets synched with Panther. The.kext files that enable hardware support and booting ability in older machines come from there....
Which will be nice for me. When XPostFacto works with 10.3, I can update both of my beige G3s and my 9600 at the same time (all of which run Jaguar):)
There were forms in all the labs. Problem? Fill out the form, stick it in the basket outside the lab. Lab techs would collect the sheets on rounds, take 'em back to central, everything would get LOGGED and then problems would be fixed.
Oh, 3dstudio keeps crashing? You didn't fill out a trouble ticket? SUFFER.
We used the same process for print outputs, with the difference being that all output was logged in a databse (this wasn't done with tech stuff for the obvious reason that, since half of the building was NT 4, someone would be swamped with data entry for the rest of their lives). No form, no service. Everything you put on the form was entered into the database. Come back to bitch about something being printed wrong? Tough shit, idiot- you told us to do it that way.
The nice thing about the database is we knew who was putting in requests, when they were doing it, and how often. Also, what medium and formats. This made tracking people who put in a TON of requests or people who CONSTANTLY fucked things up and REFUSED TO LEARN extremely easy- our supervisor just had to check the db for the person's name, and blam.
The lab technicians, as well as the print technicians, had the dual joys of informing thousands of hopelessly brain damaged users that we are not instructors, we are not tutors, we will not show you how to run the video capturing system. Really pissed off a few people who for some reason thought that just because they couldn't pay attention in class, we should hold their hand through print procedure. Six times in a week.
Rage? Yeah. I worked customer service. In IT. Getting paid minimum wage. Wouldn't offer the job to Hitler.
I grew up knowing most people were dumb, but after a year of printing Quark, Illustrator, and Photoshop documents- and dealing with the people who submitted them- I now have incontrovertable proof.
My advice? Stay on top of hardware failures. Deal with errors of software and hardware. Make it subtly obvious that your department does not service user error.:P
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I feel I should clarify the OS 9 directory structure. :)
/Applications, /Library and /System, you might have noticed "Applications (Mac OS 9)", "Documents", and "System Folder" on the root disk of new macs. Those belong to the Classic Environment. As do "Desktop Folder" and "Temporary Items", which OS X refuses to hide for some reason- a fact that can make browsing shares on an OS X server kind of >. at times.
While the parent poster has done an excellent job of detailing the geneology of
UNLIKE unix, you can move all that stuff that belongs to Classic into a folder and smack it somewhere- like ~/Documents/Classic if you want to keep it all to yourself. You might have to repoint where it launches from in the System Preferences, but beyond that, Classic doesn't care.
I have a powerbook g3 (pismo, 640 ram) and OS X takes so long to wake up from sleep that, well.... I never sleep the machine. Especially since the applications I run - Photoshop - take a veeeeeeery LONG time to pick up where they left off when sleep cycled. :|
:-/
Nothing quite like watching your battery meter slowly decrease while Photoshop SPODs..... and SPODs..... and SPODs....
Try Jaguar on a 7300. Or Panther on a 9600. Or even Panther on a beige G3. For those of us who love Apple hardware, can't afford gear more recent than four years old, and want to get some UNIX out of it, Linux just blows OS X right out of the water.
Linux doesn't care about my video chipset. X11 DEs don't require 32 megs of VRAM. Linux runs inside of 128 megs of physical memory without difficulty. Fluxbox is just as responsive as OS 9 on the same hardware- something OS X still can't claim.
All that and here's the bag of chips: The Debian "Software Update" (apt) updates EVERY APPLICATION ON THE SYSTEM. Compare to OS X, where I get my Apple updates through SWU and have to download and install Adobe updates, new builds of BZFlag, new versions of Quicksilver, etceteras myself.
Not to say I don't have issues with various packages, but dear GODS Linux is far more useable on older hardware than OS X. On a general level- quality of applications and userland are a slightly different matter.
Man, I love that game. I still own my second copy, though the box is pretty worn out. Got it for cheap at Ames in the middle of nowhere. The game was fun- like, easily as much fun as The Legend of Zelda or The Secret of Mana. I put it up there with River City Ransom on my list of favorite NES games.
:|
And for some reason, they never made a sequel, never made a SNES version, never made anything similar.
o.O
:| Also, since it's technically MacOS running on top of Linux (eg, you boot linux and then MacOS inside of it)... MOL's existance kind of proves both of our points.
Hahah. Hm.
I've messed with MOL in the past- "messed with" being "couldn't get it to work on an iMac".
o_o
O_o
Man, if it's possible to run OS X on non-Apple PPC, totally hook me up with some links. I'm totally all about this from the geek factor- and possibly the economic standpoint as well.
To run MacOS requires a PPC. Not just ANY PPC, a Macintosh. That's ONE breed of computer. Just one.
To run Linux, you need a computer and some means of getting linux onto it. Linux runs on Sparcs, Ultras, SGIs, Alphas, x86, m68k, several different PPC variants, pdas, cel phones, the Game Cube, the Dreamcast, digital watches, and the IBM 390 mainframes.
Not only does linux run on practically everything, it handles almost identically across ALL of these architectures. Your debian experience won't be much different on an Ultra III than it will be on a Dell or a Macintosh G3 (aside from hardware support, obviously).
I can install linux on any computer I can find in the dumpster.
Every other OS on the planet (BSDs excepted) are much less portable and available on a vastly narrower variety of hardware.
So. DUH. Of COURSE it's a growth industry. Linux is popular on the x86- and there's got to be at least 10 PCs for every Mac, just in terms of volume of existing hardware. Linux will continue to gain marketshare because it isn't tied to any specific hardware, making the cost of entry incredibly, amazingly cheap.
Can I get a HELL YEAH! ?
By only supporting a dead OS with minimal marketshare- an OS I can troubleshoot from memory over the phone without even having a machine around for reference- I both greatly reduce the annoyance in my life, and greatly increase the value of the tech support I do give.
On the end user.
:D Fortunately, he still uses OS 9 and I can answer just about all of his questions from memory. The only time I've ever had to do serious tech support for him was when his preferences folder somehow got moved out of his system folder.... that was interesting.
:-)
I've done work for free for some people, and they're quite happy. They make me dinner or take me out for a few drinks or something.
I've also done work for free for some people, and they're never happy- to the point of hassling me every time they see me because they need help with some piece of software (that has extensive documentation, installed), they did something I told them not to do and broke something, or, in general, are too thickheaded to learn for themselves and want me to do their thinking for them.
I much prefer the former type of person to the latter. Of the seven field users I support (people whom I've given computers to over the years), five of them only contact me when something is seriously broken, and the other two can't even find the help key on the keyboard unless I come to their house and phyiscally show it to them. Multiple times.
Then there's my dad.
Family's obviously a different matter than friends- I've minimized the damage to my sanity by only supporting OS 9. I patently refuse to deal with Windows in any capacity (it took several people a very long time to realize this), I don't support linux (I tell people how to get answers the same way I get them- google, a notebook, and a printer), and everyone I know running OS X is a self-sufficient operator.
All in all, refusing to deal with Windows has saved me countless hours of free time (and work time!), and has even switched a couple of people over to Macintosh. Go figure.
Actually, I used one yesterday. :P My coworker's still trying to get the current Debian installer to boot off of the beast so I can ssh in and take care of the rest. o_o
Anyway.
The last time there was a Big Hardware Stink in my department was when said coworker built a box without a floppy- because we don't use them and didn't think we needed them.
WRONG!
The motherboard required a bios update, which required a DOS...... you guessed it.... FLOPPY. Gah.
Personally, I chalk it up as a quirk of the architecture. I'm happy with my Open Firmware- much less hassle to update (obviously, Apple controls the hardware AND the software).
Though I doubt most Mac users would know what to do with an OF prompt- it's a FORTH interpreter.
For all you froods who are all OMFGWTF WHAT IS THE POINT?!!!!!!!!!!!!!1, well... that's it.
;-D
Motherboard BIOS. Updates? DOS floppy or DOS onboard generally required. Not always, especially these days, but geeze. FreeDOS, I assume, will work just as well as DOS for this purpose.
I'm a Mac user and I know this! What's your excuse?
Whoah.
:D
Looks like I can actually get some use out of The Collection. I acquired two each of 6100, 7100, and 8100s and they've been gathering dust in the basement.... and 6100s are evil little pizza boxes.
ph34r.
Though I had to move our workplace linux server into testing to snag a netatalk revision that doesn't BARF on panther, and stable revisions don't do more than the Classic MacOS filename limitations. :| And then the size limitations- afpd doesn't like anything over two gigs in my experience.... and I have a few files in the 13-16 range (I do video). So we wound up using Samba and Netatalk on the box, and juggling between the two for data transfer. :P
:-)
Still, you can get the aforementioned anemic macs on ebay for 25-100$ (depending on options), and a newer box is going to be a bit pricier, even if it's a PC. I know if I buy an 8500 for 25$ that I'm not going to have to buy a second ethernet card for it, and if all I need is a DHCP server, hey... some people don't like to deal with a bios.
You can get a basic idea of Panther performance in my own words here: http://www.secretaboutbox.com/museum/000098.php. It's a writeup of my workstation, which is a beige G3 with a 350 processor overclocked to 366, and 388 ram.
.
:)
My experience with installing Panther is also written up, here : http://www.secretaboutbox.com/articles/000096.php
Basically, if you have a supported video card and enough ram, you'll be able to handle iChat, Safari, and Office fine. I browse the net with the machine reviewed above through a modem shared out on my iMac, and my only problem is that Safari hogs the entire connection- so it's load pages or type in IRC.
Anything more demanding than Office / internet (like video, games, photoshop), and you'll be tearing your hair out.
An important feature of OS X Server is the Server Administration tools. My own home server, which has the internal 6 meg ATI chipset (see above post in this thread) is a slug when I need to hit the gui. But I don't. Apple has provied Server Admin Tools with OS X Server, and the tools for Jag run very well under Panther client. These gui tools allow me to add users, manage shares, manage printers, quicktime streaming (if in use), configure Apache to an extent, DHCP, Netboot.... basically, everything you DO with a server that you don't do with client. And the tools can be installed on ANY machine running OS X. Load them up, they ask for a server IP or domain name. Enter it in, it asks for your password for the server (admin accounts only, naturally). And BLAM!
:-)
:-) And I've never had problems with hard drives bigger than 8g running OS X on IDE host adapters- I had 10.1 installed on a 60g in a 9500 awhile back, and it was Just Fine. This is due entirely to the controller- the system sees it as a SCSI drive. :D
I have complete remote control of all of my server functions from my workstation, and the ones I can't access via the gui tools can be hit through the command line. With the older Server 1.x, you needed a web browser to manage shares, which was both interesting (the convienience) and annoying (security, you needed to be at ANOTHER MACHINE that WASN'T THE SERVER to do it).
Yeah, you can do hardcore awesome amounts of remote management with linux (I recently recompiled a kernel, formatted a RAID array, installed and set up samba, netatalk, and genrally completely configured a linux server from my desktop through a slew of terminal windows. SO SEXY OMG), but the gui tools for OS X are AWESOME for admins with limited command line fu- I got Jaguar Server up and completely configured just how I wanted it without help, compared to both of my monitors being strewn with google searches and man page entries with my linux configuration process. Some people don't want to do it the hard way, and can't afford the new toys.
As for compatability and stability of G3 boards... I only had stability problems if I diddled with the defaults on the control software. So I didn't. I've run OS X, Linux, and MacOS 9.x on g3 upgraded machines, rock solid, without difficulties.
And concerning the 8 gig limit- that only affects Beige G3s and the original iMacs. And only on IDE drives. My workstation had to be partitioned (80g- 8/2/$), my iMac had to be partitioned (60g, 6/54), and my server didn't (9g SCA). It's an IDE thing, not a SCSI thing, and the old beige machines such as the 9600 are SCSI.
If you have a x100 lying around, or a 7200, your options consist of MKLinux or MacOS. Unless developers have made serious progress on that front, and personally, I can't imagine there being much motivation to do so. :)
:D
:-)
The only major issue I've had with linux on older mac hardware is the usual X11 nightmare, specifically with motherboard video on 8500s/7300s. Back when it was a priority for me, the one x11 config I found was wrong. THAT was a fun experience....
Another issue I've had - which is largely due to the fact I'm a longtime mac user and used to things Just Working- is that the linuces I've tried on my hardware have a funny tendency to ignore SCSI cards or refuse to boot with certain hardware in place- I have an Orange Micro board that OS X cheerfully ignores, OS 9 sees without a problem, which makes Linux quite angry, which I find fairly amusing.
Then there's modem support.
Depending on your needs and hardware, you're definitely going to get a LOT more performance out of linux than you will with OS X on beige hardware- especially if you intend to actually use a GUI. In which case, well... X11 is a SPEED DEMON on a 7300's motherboard video compared to Jaguar.
Heh. A 9500 only has two drive bays- three if you feel like ripping out the floppy and boring holes in the case with a dremel. When it comes to internal drive capacity, you want a 9600, 8600, or beige G3- all of which have internal tray capacity for five drives (one 3.5, then four in the front that are universal trays with mounts for floppy, zip, hard drive, and CDRom- you can easily drop out the floppy and smack in a hard drive). Alternatively, you can add a few firewire cards and load in several drives, but you're still limited by the system bus. :P
:)
:D
My home fileserver is a beige G3/266 with 256 megs of ram. Two IDE hard drives - a 60 and an 80- UWSCSI for an internal 4g disk, an Adaptec 29{3|4}0 card for the outboard 9g SCA drive that holds the OS, and an Apple rom 10/100 ethernet card. It's running 10.2 Server (10.2.0- I've never bothered to patch it up) and runs out basic file services to my home network. Runs like a champ, minus the initial pains in the arse of getting the OS actually ON. All of the SLOW one experiences in OS X is totally at the graphical userland level, in my experience- which isn't something the server uses. My workstation (also a biege G3, running Panther Client thanks to XPF) is a slug, and it has 128 more ram than the server... but I use it largely for gui stuff, and the OS is (UNFORTUNATELY) on an IDE drive- the big SCSI went into the server.
I could easily do the server on my 9600 with the Sonnet ATA/66 card that's in my 7300, but the ATA card seems to be a bit flaky, and the 9600's already running linux just fine....
Alternatively, I could toss on Server 1.1 without using XPF at all. It's neat to play with if you can find the media, although I personally wouldn't use it for anything other than Apple File Services.
It is less hassle to get 10.2 or 10.3 onto a beige mac, if you don't have much linux experience- but linux has this funny habit of supporting older hardware that OS X screams about.
Dunno what you'd be doing with them, but I bought an Indigo2 with the CD drive, a 2g hard drive, IRIX 6.5 installed, and 576 megs of ram for 100$ on ebay. The only thing I needed was a monitor converter. The machine is a 200mhz r10k, 64bit, solid impact graphics, built in ethernet. Given the fact that it's fairly beef for a base indigo2, I could resell it for a bit more than I paid for it. But it's this insane, eye-melting PURPLE and looks really cool!
:| According to hardcore SGIheads, Octanes are Freaking Cheap on ebay- cheap by SGI pricing- 400-600$ for a base unit, if you're lucky. Though 100$ seems to be the going rate for SGI systems on ebay- assuming you're willing to pay out the nose for shipping.
:-)
I've seen o2s (the little speedbump things) for ~100$- usually with the NO HARD DRIVE OMFG!!!! stipulation, or the NO OS!!!!! stipulation- and IRIX media goes for an arm and a leg on ebay.
Given the price of PC hardware these days, your main reasons for an SGI would be the 1337 factor, and, as you said, the ton of CFD software that's available.
Me, I'm a graphics dweeb. I'll eventually get around to turning my indigo into a BZFlag box.
Am I alone in thinking that is a singularly overbadged and MASSIVELY UGLY workstation? I remember when Sun badges were small- smaller than a fifty cent piece, and on the front of the unit only. They seem to have latched on to Apple's design aesthetic of logo integration and completely botched the implementation. :|
Out of the "high end" equipment on the market- G5s, SGI workstations, the super high-end PCs- Sun's current line of workstations are far and above the ugliest, most blatant eyesores. Aesthetics aside, there's some neat gear in the thing, but dear gods. It hurts my face! COULD THE SUN LOGO BE ANY BIGGER?!
(actually, yes it could- re : the Netra)
That feature was originally in early seeds of Jaguar. I still have a developer preview somewhere that does exactly this- minimize in place, application icon attached to the window. Apple did it, they just axed it from the GM for some reason.
Honestly. They take care of themselves, for the most part- minus the User personality type that demands the Computer Guy to stop in once a week just so they'll stop whining about $whatever.
:-/
:-)
Some people will always have computer problems, no matter how idiot proof the machine is. Just about everybody that's whined at me uses Windows- and out of all of the computers I have, not a single one is x86.
I can't tell you how much pain and annoyance that one simple fact has saved me.
My family tried to suck me into supporting their hardware once, and were not the least bit pleased when I told them, flat out, that I Do Not Use And Consequently Do Not Support Windows. Pissed them off a bit, you might say. Friends would wind up for a Power Whine about how their laptop or desktop was sucking- and their faces would redden when I'd laugh at them and tell them to buy a Macintosh. Any time anyone would start to describe a computer problem to me, I would, simply, tell them "I don't {use|support} Windows".
The only problem with that is now instead of six people humping my leg once a week with Windows problems, I've got six people humping my leg twice a year with MacOS problems.
It is an acceptable ratio, though.
No, really. It's one thing to stop in to do upgrades or routine maintenance (a friend of mine was the happiest camper EVER when I stopped in one day and doubled her processor speed with a spare part), but it's another when the people in question are abusing your goodwill- having you do their thinking for them, coming to you with problems and questions so routine the answers are practically written on the CASE, etceteras.
:-/
I've found that Being Nice, in about 30% of cases, leads to Being Dicked.
Fortunately, people in remote locations (eg off of the busline I ride or outside of a five minute walk) have realized I'm quite simply Never Coming Over without compsensation.
XPostFacto will be updated to work with 10.3 when Darwin gets synched with Panther. The .kext files that enable hardware support and booting ability in older machines come from there....
:)
Which will be nice for me. When XPostFacto works with 10.3, I can update both of my beige G3s and my 9600 at the same time (all of which run Jaguar)
...was actually very efficient.
:P
There were forms in all the labs. Problem? Fill out the form, stick it in the basket outside the lab. Lab techs would collect the sheets on rounds, take 'em back to central, everything would get LOGGED and then problems would be fixed.
Oh, 3dstudio keeps crashing? You didn't fill out a trouble ticket? SUFFER.
We used the same process for print outputs, with the difference being that all output was logged in a databse (this wasn't done with tech stuff for the obvious reason that, since half of the building was NT 4, someone would be swamped with data entry for the rest of their lives). No form, no service. Everything you put on the form was entered into the database. Come back to bitch about something being printed wrong? Tough shit, idiot- you told us to do it that way.
The nice thing about the database is we knew who was putting in requests, when they were doing it, and how often. Also, what medium and formats. This made tracking people who put in a TON of requests or people who CONSTANTLY fucked things up and REFUSED TO LEARN extremely easy- our supervisor just had to check the db for the person's name, and blam.
The lab technicians, as well as the print technicians, had the dual joys of informing thousands of hopelessly brain damaged users that we are not instructors, we are not tutors, we will not show you how to run the video capturing system. Really pissed off a few people who for some reason thought that just because they couldn't pay attention in class, we should hold their hand through print procedure. Six times in a week.
Rage? Yeah. I worked customer service. In IT. Getting paid minimum wage. Wouldn't offer the job to Hitler.
I grew up knowing most people were dumb, but after a year of printing Quark, Illustrator, and Photoshop documents- and dealing with the people who submitted them- I now have incontrovertable proof.
My advice? Stay on top of hardware failures. Deal with errors of software and hardware. Make it subtly obvious that your department does not service user error.
True, but that was Back Then. These days, the terms "Open Source" and "Innovation" are about as gratingly pervasive as Britney Spears or N Sync. :P
Even if OSS was as trendy then as it is now, it's doubtful Apple would have opened it up, in part for some of the reasons I stated.