--- "J. Seth Henry" <jshenry@net-noise.com> wrote:
> I setup a Mac Quadra 800, which was admittedly
> pretty motley (it's a Q800
> logic board housed in an old Q700 case) with it's
> array of external disks
> and SCSI cables, for use as a small file server for
> about 6 PC's. I loaded a
> couple of 1Gb hard disks into an external enclosure,
> and installed a 250Mb
> disk in the internal bay for '/' and '/var' and a
> final 500Mb external disk
> for '/usr'. When the department workstation tech saw
> it, he asked why I was
> wasting time with that 'old crap'. (I work at a
> University as a research
> assistant) Undaunted, I went ahead and compiled
> Samba 2.0.7, and started
> setting up shares.
> 
> That was a year and a half ago. The machine has
> served all that time without
> crashing, and without losing data. It just sits in
> its corner, doing its
> thing - day in, day out. I haven't heard a single
> disparaging remark about
> that Mac in a very long time - because it's more
> reliable than the PC's it
> serves. Other than periodic adjustments (like disk
> upgrades, etc), the
> machine has had incredible uptimes. It runs for
> months on in.
> 
> I figured after a year, why not test the machine a
> bit. So, I loaded up X11.
> It runs in 16bit color, and while it's not fast,
> it's more than fast enough
> to manage multiple Xterms (the one area I wish
> NetBSD would look into is
> multiple virtual terminals...) I settled on
> BlackBox, which is a minimalist
> WM, and off I went. Now, I could open my mail in one
> window, and check out
> the system in another. (the machine only has a 13"
> RGB monitor -> 640x480)
> 
> After that success, I bought a copy of DAVE (a
> SMB/CIFS client for MacOS)
> and started using the Q800 as a file server for my
> Mac development station.
> It kept right on rocking, despite the fact I was
> actually running files, and
> working with files, in the share (I kept most of my
> work on the server so I
> could get to it easily from home) I gave the PowerPC
> to my youngest cousins
> as a first computer, but the Q800 is still going
> strong.
> 
> Now, this is a machine that, had I not owned it
> personally, would have been
> scrapped by the university never to be seen again.
> NetBSD has given it a
> *lot* more useful life. Not only has it proved
> useful, it proved more stable
> than the, cough *GASP* department Unix server
> (choke).
> 
> Seth Henry
> jshenry@net-noise.com
> 

I'm glad that it has worked well for you, those
uptimes are similar to what I've experienced too. 
This type of recycling of old Macs was what interested
me in the NetBSD port of it to begin with.  I'd gotten
a Classic II (Performa 200) and wanted to see if I put
a better OS on it.  NetBSD was the answer and it
worked.  Then I got hold of a IIci with an ethernet
card and was able to begin doing more interesting
things.  Now I've got a Quadra 700 running 1.4.3, but
the thrill is beginning to wear off.  Don't get me
wrong, I like NetBSD.  I'm just wondering how much
longer the 68k macs will be viable enough to make a
useful system with it.

Lee Reynolds

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