Re: does someone have a working Beige G3 rev. a

[Al - image hosting services <azick%zickswebventures.com@localhost>]

Hi,

On Tue, 13 May 2008, John Klos wrote:
> > Well, I guess the question should have been does anyone have a working
> > Beige G3 rev. a (hardware and with NetBSD) that they would like to sell?
>
> To tell you the truth, I've never even bothered trying to get NetBSD
> running on a beige G3 because of how idiosyncratic it is. Also, I wouldn't
> want to have to ever re-figure out how to get it to boot in a datacenter
> should something happen like the PRAM get zapped.

This is true. I was able to get NetBSD to run on a Beige G3 rev. b, but it
would not auto-boot. I was not able to get it working on Beige G3 rev. a
doing the exact same things. The one rev. a that I have I think must have
had some hardware issues. The second one we pulled the motherboard out of
an original G3 all-in-one (molar). Still I could not get it to boot. Not
really sure what I am missing. So, I am now working on getting another G3
B&W to replace the one that is failing. I will still have to pay the
higher rate to colo it, but at least I will be able to stay in business. I
put the ATTO scsi card that the G3 server (tower) came with in it. I am
able to boot from it, but I have a strange issue setting up the drive.
When I use pdisk to create the HFS partition it says that partition 2 is
not HFS. Yet, I can use hformat, hmount, and then hcopy with it. Yes, it
boots, but pdisk still complains about it. I am not sure if this is
something that I should be worried about or not.

> I could help you out with a PowerMac 7600-type machine. Bootable PCI IDE
> cards for Macs are pretty easy to find, and although they don't support
> larger than 128 gigs in MacOS, they support any size in NetBSD, plus most
> can use up to four drives.

This would be a better solution, because of what it would save me in colo
expence. I was trying to use what I had. I do have a 7250 workgroup
server. They are a 601, but I have think they could be used with an
accelerator. Not really sure though if the 7250 would be worth the trouble
though, because I think a 7600 could be had for cheap.

> A 7600 can take up to 1 gig of memory, plus accelerators are cheap. I have
> several G3 accelerators which have 1 meg of full CPU speed L2 cache which
> run at 500 MHz. Once I have time to figure out how to set the frequency
> ratios at boot, they can run at up to 1 GHz.
>
> Another CPU option is a 1 GHz G4 with 256k of L2 and 2 megs of L3. They
> cost $100 new. This is what I have in andromeda, and it's completely
> stable.
>
> To summarize:
>
> PowerMac 7600
> IDE drive
> 1 gig of memory
> Accelerator
> ethernet card
> IDE card
>
> At least it'll boot easily and predictably.

I would have to agree that if it doesn't boot, it doesn't matter how fast
or how good the hardware is. I will have to see if anyone has a 7600
around here. I was offered (by 2 people) G4s. Although, the person who has
them here locally were stored outside for a long time and the other person
will only give them to me if I colo them with him.

I must admit that andromeda seems much faster than the servers that I have
been using. It would be great if I could get something faster and smaller.

Thanks,
Al