On 08/02/07, Andy Ruhl <acruhl@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all, I've been using NetBSD a while and I'm looking to get a
> macppc machine to run NetBSD on for the first time.

Welcome!

> I'm replacing a server I have at home that's running on an i386 box.
> It is running samba, apache, postgresql, vncserver, pf, and some minor
> apps.
>
> I'm looking at used boxes on ebay, and it appears that a 400 or 450mhz
> blue G3 seems like a pretty good deal, and plenty of machine to do the
> jobs I need to do. Anything I should look out for? Is this not a good
> idea?

I'd recommend looking out to get at least a "Rev. 2" B&W (blue and
white)  G3. The Rev. 1 original B&W G3 have a buggy IDE chip, I'm
running mine with a modified kernel that disables some modes (wd* at
atabus? drive ? flags 0x0f00)

I'd also recommend adding a cheap PCI ethernet card (I'm using a 3Com
3c905B) since I found the built-in bmac ethernet to not work well at
100mbps. (Works fine at 10baseT though, good enough for, say, a DSL
modem) (there are pr's out on that issue)

Aside from that my Rev.1 G3 has been a faithful server for well over a
year, running dovecot, squirrelmail, apache2, samba, netatalk, dyndns,
etc...

> Also, I'm considering getting a new mac laptop for personal use. I'll
> be using OSX, but it would be a plus to be able to boot NetBSD. I know
> the latest ones are Intel based. I kind of had my heart set on the 12"
> powerbook from a while back for it's portability. Any reason why I
> should not buy a ppc based machine (used, obviously)?

I've got a 1.33GHz 12" G4 powerbook.  The "cold, dead hands" phrase
comes to mind but is untrue - I'll take it with me, you can't have it
even then...

Joe.
PS. Sorry for the dup Andy, I didn't hit "reply all"...