Maybe I should flame you, since you only responded to the flamer below.:-)
But tell me, how many people really need a TNT2 to run Microsoft Office? Fast video ain't the be-all and end-all of a high-performance computer. Case in point -- my wife runs Media100 on a Mac 8100/100, and the bottleneck is (you guessed it) the processor. Can't wait to get her a G4! I doubt that the "bottom of the barrel" video will present a problem.
As for preventing upgrades to current G3 systems, I expect the third-party providers to work around that in a hurry.
Finally, I'll repeat what others said about Apple's upgrade prices -- buy what you want mail-order and install it yourself. It's all standard parts these days.
Yeah, the MacOS versions lag the others a bit, but the current versions let you write programs that look like Mac apps. TCL/Tk also interoperates well with AppleScript.
With a little care, your MacTCL program will work on Un*x and Windoze too. Nice stuff.
... Mac OS X is something of a Frankensteins monster: Apple over NextStep over BSD over Mach..... I don't think this is what Ken Thompson had in mind for Unix.
If you're talking about "do one thing and do it well," I doubt he had Emacs in mind either. People use it anyway, although I can't understand why.
I still have an AIM-65 somewhere around the house. I bought it while in college, and used it for quite a few projects. I bought the FORTH-in-ROM for it and wrote a dice-roller program that made our weekend Dungeons and Dragons sessions a little easier to deal with for the DM.
I've set up just such a system lately myself. You'll want dt (from www.macbsd.com) for virtual consoles, and hfsutils for that all-important access to your MacOS partition.
Someone has/had a Mac Plus running a web server; can't remember the URL but I do recall it got Slashdotted.
Yes, NetBSD has the ports stuff, except it's called "packages." In the NetBSD camp, "ports" are the many many different architectures that NetBSD runs on -- so a different name was needed to avoid confusion.
The NetBSD/mac68k mailing list has one of the friendliest groups of people I've ever seen on the Net. Questions get answered patiently, often with pointers to references. In the last (nearly) two years, I've seen only one questioner get flamed, and that was because he was being thoroughly obnoxious about getting an answer.
You want a user-friendly computer? Make a Palm Pilot with a big screen. Press a button and you're in 'email' mode. Press another button and you're in 'web' mode. Anything more than the minimum function set necessary to do the job at hand (e.g. email/web) is wasted on the average user.
Seems to me you could set up something like that using the KDE or Gnome taskbar. And it would work, until...
Until that average user wanted to install some cool game. I could probably convert my entire friends/family "user base" to Linux but for that.
My personal view of the "average user" sees them as a little more knowledgeable, possibly because I show them what I'm doing when I help them out. I get few follow-up calls asking me to do the same thing -- my evenings are a little quieter, but I don't make as much beer money as I could.:-)
People like your pretty young client are glad to adjust, especially if you show them a more convenient way to do something. If they thought that they were limited to what's on the hard drive already, I doubt that they would be interested in getting the computer in the first place.
Reading. A LOT. I didn't have access back then to all the electrical goodies we have today. Oh well.
My son, at age 9, taught his entire class how to use the Macs in the computer room while the teacher was called out for something. He also started hunting squirrels with an air rifle (aka BB gun) -- successfully! -- back then.
For him, though, computers are a tool, a way to do something, rather than the destination. Guitars are his passion.
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But tell me, how many people really need a TNT2 to run Microsoft Office? Fast video ain't the be-all and end-all of a high-performance computer. Case in point -- my wife runs Media100 on a Mac 8100/100, and the bottleneck is (you guessed it) the processor. Can't wait to get her a G4! I doubt that the "bottom of the barrel" video will present a problem.
As for preventing upgrades to current G3 systems, I expect the third-party providers to work around that in a hurry.
Finally, I'll repeat what others said about Apple's upgrade prices -- buy what you want mail-order and install it yourself. It's all standard parts these days.
-- Dirt Road
With a little care, your MacTCL program will work on Un*x and Windoze too. Nice stuff.
-- Dirt Road
Ah heck, X-files is the only thing I've watched regularly on TV in the last 18 years or so. Might as well pull the plug on that dang thing for good.
-- Dirt Road
If you're talking about "do one thing and do it well," I doubt he had Emacs in mind either. People use it anyway, although I can't understand why.
-- Dirt Road
It just seems that *BSD has an extra heaping helping of bad attitudes that make commercial vendors look like pikers.
You haven't dealt with the NetBSD/mac68k folks, then. A more helpful group of people you won't find anywhere on the Net.
-- Dirt Road
Funny how I was telling my mom about this last night.
I suspect that my daughter will be more of a techie than my son. He's good with computers, but his passions lie in other areas.
-- Dirt Road
What's so hard about typing:
make UNIX_CAN_BUILD_STATIC=0
?
-- Dirt Road
I still have an AIM-65 somewhere around the house. I bought it while in college, and used it for quite a few projects. I bought the FORTH-in-ROM for it and wrote a dice-roller program that made our weekend Dungeons and Dragons sessions a little easier to deal with for the DM.
Amazing, the stuff we used to do with 4K of RAM.
-- Dirt Road
I've set up just such a system lately myself. You'll want dt (from www.macbsd.com) for virtual consoles, and hfsutils for that all-important access to your MacOS partition.
Someone has/had a Mac Plus running a web server; can't remember the URL but I do recall it got Slashdotted.
-- Dirt Road
Yes, NetBSD has the ports stuff, except it's called "packages." In the NetBSD camp, "ports" are the many many different architectures that NetBSD runs on -- so a different name was needed to avoid confusion.
-- Dirt Road
The NetBSD/mac68k mailing list has one of the friendliest groups of people I've ever seen on the Net. Questions get answered patiently, often with pointers to references. In the last (nearly) two years, I've seen only one questioner get flamed, and that was because he was being thoroughly obnoxious about getting an answer.
Running NetBSD on an SE/30, and Linux on a G3,
-- Dirt Road
Seems to me you could set up something like that using the KDE or Gnome taskbar. And it would work, until...
Until that average user wanted to install some cool game. I could probably convert my entire friends/family "user base" to Linux but for that.
My personal view of the "average user" sees them as a little more knowledgeable, possibly because I show them what I'm doing when I help them out. I get few follow-up calls asking me to do the same thing -- my evenings are a little quieter, but I don't make as much beer money as I could. :-)
People like your pretty young client are glad to adjust, especially if you show them a more convenient way to do something. If they thought that they were limited to what's on the hard drive already, I doubt that they would be interested in getting the computer in the first place.
-- Dirt Road
What were you doing when you were six?
Reading. A LOT. I didn't have access back then to all the electrical goodies we have today. Oh well.
My son, at age 9, taught his entire class how to use the Macs in the computer room while the teacher was called out for something. He also started hunting squirrels with an air rifle (aka BB gun) -- successfully! -- back then.
For him, though, computers are a tool, a way to do something, rather than the destination. Guitars are his passion.
-- Dirt Road
All but the newest Macs have serial ports, actually they have two (neither one encumbered by a mouse).
So, all I need is a DB-9 to Mac serial adapter and I'm good to go. Until then, I'm having fun with the remote (my 'cracker came in yesterday's mail).
I really like the replacement outlets they have at Rat Shack. No need to have wall warts all over the house....
-- Dirt Road
That's because it's a closed-source OS. If it was open, they could grab fixes from the Linux camp or vice versa.
If Be wanted to develop for G3s, they could figure out what works and specify "these systems only." Kind of like what Apple is doing with OS X.
-- Dirt Road
AMD chip, what speed? 266? 300? 450?
Any slots? How many? Does it have a CDROM drive? Floppy?
(This is about the only way you'll get an x86 box in my house, sell it dirt cheep and preinstall Linux on it.)
-- Dirt Road
-- Dirt Road