Re: mac68k LC-PDS EtherNet support?

(Sat, Jan 04, 2003 at 09:29:42PM -0500) Nick Holland wrote/schrieb/egrapse:
> Michael wrote:
> > Since i'm trying to make this machine
> > into a web/mail server box, EtherNet is kinda important to me!
> 
> OUCH.
> 
> You do realize the performance (or lack of) of these machines, right?
> 
> Would it work as a mail and web server?  Well...yes, and probably just
> fine for very light duty, but these are basicly single tasking
> machines.  Network and disk I/O is so innefficent, the system is
> unresponsive when touching the network or disk.  Oh, and the time
> clock stops when touching network or disk...when doing a build, I've
> seen Quadras loose 20-30 minutes an HOUR.

It all depends on what one understands as "light" :-)
I'm very happy with a Quadra 700 as a webserver, mailserver, 
firewall/router. Also I'm using the machine to surf with lynx, read my
mail with mutt and do all kind of stupid things. Sometimes my wife and
me use "talk" to chat when I'm at work. But most of the time I'm the
only real user on the machine.

Not that I don't have any faster machines around (my machine at work is
a Ti PowerBook), but the old stuff is still usefull as a "light" server. 
 
> It took about 50 seconds to get a "login:" prompt using ssh2.  Of
> course, this machine was busy...scp'ing data at 128kbps (using ssh1).
> For that reason, I don't use ssh2 with the Quadras (other than to
> demonstrate how slow they are).  Before that, I tried a ssh1 login,
> "login:" prompt came up quickly, but the rest of the login process
> took almost 20 seconds.  These are painful machines to work with... 
> Assuming you have a 128k uplink on a DSL or cable modem on a
> low-volume site, it probably would run mail and web services
> fine...but maintaining it might be...painful.  

Yes, logging in takes a bit long sometimes (not really 50 seconds
on average though). I just timed logging in with public key and
ssh2 takes around 23 seconds for me. That's long compared to a
modern machine, but it's useable. I found X to be a bit slow, but
now I use the system only through ssh.

> If you don't have the NIC, for the expense and effort of finding and
> getting one, you could buy a 486/66 that would run circles around a
>  Mac68k.  

Sure, but sometimes it's nice to work with what one has. Myself, I've
got a background in Macs, so I tend to have a lot of old Mac hardware
around me. Ocasionally I came in touch with old PC hardware, but in one
such case I noticed that in that age (486 hardware) there are a lot of
weird hardware things around too, that sometimes aren't really
supported.

I think the mac68k plattform is quite usefull sometimes and can be
fun with a little bit of patience.

Regards,

Sascha


-- 
During the next two hours, the system will be going up and down several
times, often with lin~po_~{po       ~poz~ppo\~{ o n~po_~{o[po    ~y oodsou>#w4k**n~po_~{ol;lkld;f;g;dd;po\~{o