> I'm just curious what other people are doing with their setups..

I have a number of Quadras which are acting as do-it-all IP NAT / router
gateways. Most are Quadra 650 / 800 systems overclocked to 40 MHz with one
or more ethernet cards.

One, for example, is an IPv4 IP NAT system at alt.coffee in the East
Village (New York City) which also does dhcp, outgoing email, and dns for
three separate local networks. One network is the alt.coffee's local
network for customers; the second is the wireless network for alt.coffee,
and the third is the free wireless network for Tompkins Square Park. The
fourth segement is the Internet segment, on which it does ARP monitoring
and ARP locking.

Also, it has an IPv6 tunnel and routes IPv6 for all of the private
subnets. So not only can you bring a wireless laptop to Tompkins Square
Park, but if you're running NetBSD or OS X 10.2, you can use IPv6
automatically and transparently. I once took a laptop with a wireless card
and two NetBSD floppy disks to the park and did a full NetBSD install via
IPv6 just so I could say that I did it.

Most of the others run small networks on, say, cable modems; one is a
gateway at Mom's house (Mom is an official NetBSD sponsor! I have a few
machines there that are used for NetBSD projects), another at a friend's
place in the city (even has a little web page: inanna.sixgirls.org), and a
good handful are at small businesses throughout NYC. All run dns, dhcp,
IPv6, and IP NAT.

Old Quadras are excellent because, once you replace the motherboard
battery, nothing is likely to ever go wrong with them. After all, if they
made it this long, the hardware is in pretty good shape. Apple hardware,
with rare exception, has always been good quality.

> I am now up and running with my SE/30, and although I didn't expect it
> to be fast, when I started compiling ircII today at 2pm I didn't expect
> it to still be going at 2am. I have no real purpose for this machine,
> but I guess I was hoping I could mess around with it a little more. At
> this rate I'm really kind of afraid to try compiling or extracting
> anything else.

That's one of the nice things about NetBSD - start it and go off and work
on other things. 68030s are fine for DNS, backup email, and static
content, and even a 68030 Mac can IP NAT for a 1 Mbps connection without
trouble.

> If anyone is running a Quadra 840av (40mhz 040), what is it like? I have
> one that I could get going, but I would have to get some memory and a
> hard drive for it..

I have one that is used to test current, and I am waiting for more work to
be done on the DMA. Otherwise, Quadras are pretty fast and are useful for
plenty of things. It just depends on what you want them to do.

John Klos
Sixgirls Computing Labs