on 12/10/05 4:28 PM, Donald Lee at MacPPC1@caution.icompute.com wrote:

>> on 12/10/05 1:17 PM, Donald Lee at MacPPC1@caution.icompute.com wrote:
>> 
>>> I counsel caution.  MacPPC serial has historically been less than
>>> completely reliable.  It has been "good enough" for console, but
>>> that's about it, and as far as I can tell, not reliable for that.
>>> 
>>> I'm hoping that the improvements in 2.1/3.0 help.
>>> 
>>> -dgl-
>>> 
>> 
>> You've pretty much reached the same conclusions that I've reached in trying
>> to use Apple PPC hardware for anything other than Mac OS.   The hardware is
>> incredibly buggy and the open firmware is a freakin' nightmare.   An what
>> about with Mac OS?   Well, if you're using the Classic Mac OS, it's about as
>> stable as nitroglycerine and prone to frequent crashes, freezes, and
>> lockups.
>> 
>> What's really sad about this is that I used to be a big Apple supporter
>> because I truly believed in their products.   I can tell ya that I'm quite
>> disillusioned and I seriously doubt that I'll be buying anymore Apple
>> hardware.  I might buy the odd little gizmo to improve what I already have
>> -- additional memory or bigger hard drives, etc, but I'm pretty much
>> finished with the Apple offerings.
>> 
>> Just my two cents.
> 
> My comments are limited to serial support with NetBSD on MacPPC.
> 
> NetBSD 68K mac serial support was rock solid.  I used it for dialup service
> for some time. (years)
> 
> built-in MacPPC serial has been little used from day 1.  I went to a Cyclades
> 8-port serial card for serial, and that worked (is working...) fine for
> years, though I had to tweak the driver to make it reliable.
> 
> With serial, I think the main problem is that it is just not used much, so
> few people care enough to make it work.
> 
> Mac OS 9 and X are not the subject matter here.
> 
> -dgl-

I'm not going to disagree with you.  I'm currently using a 68k LC575 as a
serial console.   Works fabulously!