68K compatible NAS?

[Byrd]

Hi.

posting my other thread viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15284

... has made me think about setting up a NAS to share my saved pile of 68K/PPC apps and images with older Macs. I'm currently looking into getting a basic NAS (ie. single HD, perhaps with Bitorrent support - or going FreeNAS on a MiniITX setup) for my OS X machines, but was wondering if there was anything stopping me from using the very same NAS for 68K/PPC Macs? Any hardware recommendations?

Thanks

JB

 

[Gorgonops]

Many (most?) roll-your-own NAS Linux distributions (and many of the off-brand prebuilt devices that use Linux) include Netatalk, which works fine with 68k Macs with Ethernet. The only issue I can think of is that prior to some System 7 version (which I don't recall off the top of my head) you may have issues mounting or using large volumes. (Either two or four gigs, again I forget.)

 

[Charlieman]

The volume size for a local disk varies according to MacOS version. 2GB applies prior to System 7.5, which supported 4GB. Even bigger disks require a PCI PowerMac.

System 6 will work with an AppleShare volume up to about 30GB. I've even used a Mac 512K to access volumes of that size.

 

[Gorgonops]

System 6 will work with an AppleShare volume up to about 30GB. I've even used a Mac 512K to access volumes of that size.

Prior to Appleshare protocol versions shipped prior to OS X both reported volume size and volume free space are reported as 4 byte unsigned long integers. Thus the maximum reportable filesystem volume size is 4GB. (If you do more Googling you'll find the limit is 2GB prior to system 7.5.) Assuming the particular server is otherwise protocol compatible with an older client it will probably work fine but size and free space will be incorrectly reported on the client.

(Netatalk contains an option to specifically cut off volume size reporting at 2GB for older clients.)

 

[Byrd]

That does it then - I'm building my own FreeNAS server Shouldn't have to buy a thing, have an EPIA M10000 board sitting here, 1Gb RAM, enough IDE hds for 400+GB ... in a custom case.