Hi,

On Fri, 11 Oct 2002, Dan Zinngrabe wrote:

> > keyboard, and mouse. So, there would be nothing that I would need to buy
> > for the mac. On the down side the mac is terribly slow, and now that I
> > have a quadra (this mac will not support 2 NICs) hooked to the cable modem
> > it only downloads at about 14K per sec. (this is under mac OS). Plus, this
> > computer is really ticking me off, because it should be able to bus much
> > more than that.
>
> I was in pretty much the same situation - a Mac guy setting up a Classic as a
> BSD based router and wireless access point. The hardware/etc. is pretty much
> compatible- all SCSI, etc. The only things you might need to get that would
> be sun-specific would be ethernet cards and RAM. A SCSI drive pulled from a
> Mac should work fine.

I only have 8 or 9 Macs.

> > As for the Sparc Classic, it will cost me $110 to get a quad 10baseT
> > ethernet card. And it will need a bigger hard drive and more memory. Plus
> > it does not have a floppy drive. I must admit that I never used a sun
> > before and I am a little bit nervous about playing with the openPROM.
>
> It's not a big deal, and if you've ever had to deal with OpenFirmware on a
> PCI mac, it's really no different. Once you're set up with NetBSD, you won't
> have to worry about open boot prom, etc. unless you have a dead NVRAM (see
> below).

This is something that I never had to deal with on a Mac, because I only
have one PowerMac, and it only has a 601.

> > 1. Does NetBSD support a quad 10baseT ethernet card? (I can't seem to find
> > this in the faq.)
>
> As far as I know, yes. I'm using an hme 2.1, which is the same thing pretty
> much but with one port, not 4. You probably won't need 4 ports, and it
> probably won't be worth the extra money.

I was just going to buy the four port just incase I need it some day, but
I was wondering if I used more than one port on that card would I see a
performance decrease?


> > 4. Is there any other problems that I will run into by using a sparc
> > classic?
>
> My only real problems have been wireless related, and finding a null modem
> cable that would go from the Classic (and later an IPX that I'm now not going
> to use, it has other hardware issues). The Quad ethernet cards LOOK dandy,
> but you probably won't need it, and finding and hme SBUS ethernet card on
> eBay is easy and cheap ($40 is about the going price, search for "sbus
> ethernet").

I will take a look at ebay.

> Keep in mind the Classic has onboard ethernet too :)
>
> One problem you might run into with a used Classic is a dead NVRAM (PRAM to
> us mac guys). On Sun machines it's a little more complicated than just
> swapping the battery like in a Mac, but not a big deal- I ended up setting in
> a new NVRAM for the IPX (the NVRAM chips cost about $20).
>
> >
> > 5. When one would you use for a router?
>
> Probably the IPX, it does take up a lot less space! For the things you want
> to do, netbsd supports everything you want on the Classic with a generic
> kernel, while some of the wireless stuff I'm doing requires a custom kernel,
> which is a bit of a pain. Finding 50 pin SCSI drives is getting a little
> harder, but owc and megamacs have 1-4GB drives for cheap, and putting one in
> a Classic is no different than in a Mac (though get half height drives to fit
> in the little classic). Most external Mac CD drives should boot the classic,
> my external CD-R works fine. You do need a slightly unusual SCSI cable though.

I have a SCSI CD from a PC that I was going to put into an old external
Mac drive case. I just hope it works! But where do I get get this "slightly
unusual SCSI cable" from?

> BTW- instead of a keyboard, monitor, etc. for the Sun, I'm using ZTerm and a
> null modem cable without any problems, the sun accepts it fine when it boots.
> So if you don't want to have the keyboard and monitor taking up space when
> you set it up, a null modem cable will connect one of your Macs to the
> Classic with no problems.

I haven't used a null modem in years, but I must admit the idea of using
on again seems neat. But I was wondering does the Sparc Classic have any
problem with keymapping or video?

Thanks,
Al