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What to do with an old PC and iMac HD?

Author	Topic
mac-man6 Junior Member Canada 217 Posts	Posted - 11 Jul 2002 : 11:37:37 Hello, I have a 266mhz eMachine and I'm going back to an iMac. I think I'll upgrade the iMac HD and put the old HD in the eMachine and use it as a fileserver, it's only purpose is to compliment the iMac :-). My problem is I dont trust windows and I want some OS to run quickly on it and store mac files. I also want it easy to setup, I've tried BeOS P5, I'm curious about openstep and maybe linux but I want it easy. Thanks for your help. ------------------ Mac SE 4/40 Mac Classic II 4/40 Mac IIx 8/160 Mac IIvi 8/260 Mac Quadra 650 32/260 Mac Quadra 650 64/350 via basilisk II iMac 333 How you like d'em apples?!
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 11 Jul 2002 : 11:48:11 quote: I dont trust windows and I want some OS to run quickly on it and store mac files. I also want it easy to setup, I've tried BeOS P5, I'm curious about openstep and maybe linux but I want it easy. HAR! that's a catch 22 if i've ever heard one! windows would HAVE to be the easiest solution and from personal experience, it's quite stable if it's not running microsoft apps and acceptably stable running third party apps. if you're not running any apps on it at all, it might actually be your best bet in the ease of use/stability tradeoff! snickers i can't believe i just typed that without LOL! jt ™. Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF
cinemafia Guerrilla Recon Leader USA 2965 Posts	Posted - 11 Jul 2002 : 11:51:53 I just finished setting up an old IBM p1 200MHz PC with Windows 98, but I'm planning on making it at least a dual-booter, with 98 and some flavor of Linux. You can read about my adventures on 'Fritter in this thread. 666th poster and 666th thread-creator Mod of the Mac II series Forums Total 68K Macs liberated: 7 I Have No Legs!
oldmacman Full Member USA 713 Posts	Posted - 11 Jul 2002 : 11:57:47 OpenStep will do it. OpenStep will read Mac and Windoze floppies and CD-ROMs right out of the box, and the free CAPer application allows for sharing files and printers with Macs. Plus, OpenStep will network with OS X Macs via NetInfo. I don't know how well it handles the resource fork, but it will work fine for MP3s, etc. The only problem is the hardware requirements. See the Installation page of my OpenStep webpage for what works. The supported hardware is quite limited, but a generic VESA driver (requires the Y2K patch), a Sound Blaster driver, and an IDE driver are included. OpenStep is pretty easy to install. See my webpage below for an installation walkthrough. As for Linux, it's a lot more difficult than many people lead you to believe. The desktop environments are resource hogs, IMHO, and the system itself is quite bloated. I don't like it much. Windoze does not handle Mac files very well at all. It requires additional software to read Mac disks, and it's not stable enough to use on a server. Official 68kMLA Music and NeXT Expert OpenStep Page at http://openstep.topcities.com/ Macs Liberated: SE, IIsi, Quadra 700, 6100, PB 5300, PowerMac 5400 PCs liberated from Windoze: 3
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 11 Jul 2002 : 12:26:39 quote: Windoze does not handle Mac files very well at all. It requires additional software to read Mac disks, and it's not stable enough to use on a server. agreed on the "gotta have a piece of software part", but if it's just a network of two machines or a few macs used two at a time, it has to be the easiest and most generally useful config for a dual platform setup around. for a dedicated REAL server i'm sure you're right. but to put one PC with a Big@$$ IDE drive onto a network consisting of a 68k collection and a Mac workstation or three (in active use on the network one at a time) as a backup server and for file and printer sharing or in ornery file format translation sutuations, even i have to think of windows first! . . . and i'm trying to create a mordorsoft free zone around here. <rolleyes> if i'm mistaken, i may need you to help me set up a dual boot situation with the game box i'm slowly piecing together. what's wrong with my rationalization (as opposed to reasoning! LOL!). jt ™. Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF
oldmacman Full Member USA 713 Posts	Posted - 11 Jul 2002 : 14:41:30 quote: I think I'll upgrade the iMac's HD and put the old HD in the eMachine and use it as a fileserver whose only purpose is to complement the iMac. He said the machine was to be used only for a fileserver. IMHO, unless he wants to have to reboot the machine often, he should steer away from Windoze at all costs. At a small local volunteer agency for which I do volunteer work, there is a small 3-computer Windoze network with a machine used only for serving a small number of database files. They have to restart the server every night, or it inevitably slows down from memory leaks, and subsequently freezes. If the machine will be turned off every night and crashes/freezes are not a problem, Windoze might be a good solution. However, if the machine will remain on constantly, serving files to the iMac, then Windoze will be nothing but trouble. Official 68kMLA Music and NeXT Expert OpenStep Page at http://openstep.topcities.com/ Macs Liberated: SE, IIsi, Quadra 700, 6100, PB 5300, PowerMac 5400 PCs liberated from Windoze: 3
MrLynn Junior Member USA 394 Posts	Posted - 11 Jul 2002 : 15:18:12 Depends what flavor of Windoze you're using. We've run an NT4 server on a medical-office LAN with Win98 clients for four years, 24 hours a day, and the server (actually two; upgraded last year) has NEVER crashed, except when a new office manager accidentally hit the restart button when changing a backup tape. Much as I hate to say it, the clients have been pretty stable, too. Of course, we don't ask a lot of them--they're basically running one practice-management app (an SQL database on the server); I run a lot more apps and gizmos on my OS 9 G3, but it does freeze up quite a bit--especially with Netscape. /Mr Lynn Curator of: SE (6.0.4), SE w. 020 accelerator (6.0.8), SE w. no HD, IIfx (7.1), IIci (bad HD); plus various PPCs in family (blue G3/350 is main Mac these days).
Kady Mae Junior Member USA 261 Posts	Posted - 11 Jul 2002 : 15:55:27 I'd like to say that my main productivity desk top at home is W98 and here at work it's also W98 and both machines are very stable and seldom crash. Okay, the work machine crashes a little bit more, but that's because there is some horky 3rd party software on it. (Lotus Notes) Ad-Astra once ran 6 months without crashing, and during the period where I had her on 24/7 for 2 months, I only rebooted her after sofware installs. (I do that even if the software is designed to be run w/out a reboot.) The last time she BSOD'd on me was when I ran that POS called Windows Media Player. W98 or NT4 can be used to make this machine a nice reliable file server. Just don't upgrade the version of IE that comes with it (use Netscape or better yet, Opera) and don't download and install any updated versions of Windows Media Computer Hijacker. Avoid any flavor of 95, and ME is not worth the needless bloat. W98, 98se, or NT4/NT 2000 are your best bets. Just make sure you've got a minimum of 64mb RAM. 68K's liberated: 0 68Ks adopted to loving homes: 2 PowerMacs adopted: 1
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 11 Jul 2002 : 16:08:01 quote: The last time she BSOD'd on me was when I ran that POS called Windows Media Player. . . . and don't download and install any updated versions of Windows Media Computer Hijacker. HAR! the page-jack express! the K6-2 my kid surfs with is even stable under '98 with only 32 MB of RAM running AMERICA OFFLINE!!!! shudders at the thought of using it on a mac again if that POS can't take it down, i gopt NO problems with it configured as above as long as i don't need to run any mordorsoft apps on it! 'sides, i've got the monster Resource Kit for it already and i haven't hardly needed it, i started with it the day 3.0 shipped and then i went straight from the vanilla 3.1 upgrade to'98 in a mature build and i'm a happy camper! jt ™. Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF
SiliconValleyPirate Junior Member United Kingdom 273 Posts	Posted - 12 Jul 2002 : 01:39:15 FWIW my answer to this question consists of these steps: 1. Install Mandrake Linux 8.x 2. Download the Netatalk RedHat package from sourceforge.net 3. Install Netatalk 4. Possibly repeat 2&3 for Samba if you have Windows machines to server With that setup, a bit of learning how to configure netatalk and a few hours command line hacking I managed to set up a PC as a Mac fileserver without any trouble. As long as you mount the shared folders on a Mac the resource forks are fine, just don't do what my buddy did and go on a ._xxxx file deleting spree as those bits ARE the resource forks, as they appear on a PC. I would not recommend Windows at all for serving to an iMac, you can't use AppleTalk to a Windows machine, you can't connect the windows machine to a Mac either, and you can't mount Windows Networking (SMB/CIFS) shares on a Mac unless you have DAVE (which is very slow in anything other than OS X) or OS X 10.1 (which is still quite slow). If you are planning to run OS X on your iMac look into settingup NFS shares under Linux, they are super extra fast, much more so than AppleTalk or SMB. -- Mark Benson FlatPackMacs http://fpm.gotdns.com 2nd Lieutenant - 68kMLA, LC Quartermaster Flat Packing Macs for 68k MLA airlift excercises Macs Liberated = 14!
oldmacman Full Member USA 713 Posts	Posted - 12 Jul 2002 : 06:23:17 quote: With that setup, a bit of learning how to configure netatalk and a few hours command line hacking I managed to set up a PC as a Mac fileserver With OpenStep, you don't have to mess with the command line (yuck!). See http://www.this.net/~frank/next_cap.html for info on CAPer, a NeXT front end to the Columbia AppleTalk Package. Official 68kMLA Music and NeXT Expert OpenStep Page at http://openstep.topcities.com/ Macs Liberated: SE, IIsi, Quadra 700, 6100, PB 5300, PowerMac 5400 PCs liberated from Windoze: 3
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 12 Jul 2002 : 06:52:34 quote: With OpenStep, you don't have to mess with the command line (yuck!). See http://www.this.net/~frank/next_cap.html for info on CAPer, a NeXT front end to the Columbia AppleTalk Package. would OpenStep allow for a PC to be used as a print server for USB printers from 68k macs? i'm thinking along the lines of translating something like the Laserwriter feed from an ancient 68k like a Mac Plus over ethernet from an appletalk bridge to the PC running a postscript emulator and then printing over the modern interface using the PC as a RIP. printing anything from a 128k Mac to a USB only printer would be tres chic! jt ™. Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF
G4from128k Full Member USA 873 Posts	Posted - 12 Jul 2002 : 07:10:44 quote: printing anything from a 128k Mac to a USB only printer would be tres chic! So you could print MacPaint documents on one of those new 7-color 2800 x 700 dpi Epson printers? While you're at it, maybe you could mount a PC Firewire drive over the network on your 128k. (or better yet see if you can file-share a 400k floppy) Now if only the 128k had a SETI client (it would only take a year to do one work-unit). G4From128k by Day: Mild-Mannered Engineer and Trapeze(tm) Artist by Night: Colonel of Truth, Justice, and the Macintosh Way Reserve Officer in 68kMLA Cantankerous Coot Contingent & User of the Hockey Puck Mouse of Radial Symmetry
oldmacman Full Member USA 713 Posts	Posted - 12 Jul 2002 : 07:20:14 Sorry. OpenStep came before the days of USB and Firewire, so there's no support for it. However, I think you can use it as a print server to a regular PC parallel printer, assuming, of course, that it is PostScript compatible. It might work on Linux, but I don't know how Linux handles printing. I never could get LinuxPPC to print to my ancient HP Deskwriter. Official 68kMLA Music and NeXT Expert OpenStep Page at http://openstep.topcities.com/ Macs Liberated: SE, IIsi, Quadra 700, 6100, PB 5300, PowerMac 5400 PCs liberated from Windoze: 3
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 12 Jul 2002 : 07:22:21 quote: quote: printing anything from a 128k Mac to a USB only printer would be tres chic! So you could print MacPaint documents on one of those new 7-color 2800 x 700 dpi Epson printers? While you're at it, maybe you could mount a PC Firewire drive over the network on your 128k. (or better yet see if you can file-share a 400k floppy) Now if only the 128k had a SETI client (it would only take a year to do one work-unit). LOL! i doubt the "limited hardware support" will ever get as far as a USB printer driver, it's fun to daydream about it tho! OpenStep is the Display Postscript based environment right? i get these O.S. alternatives all mixed up. jt ™. Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 12 Jul 2002 : 07:25:25 quote: Sorry. OpenStep came before the days of USB and Firewire, so there's no support for it. However, I think you can use it as a print server to a regular PC parallel printer, assuming, of course, that it is PostScript compatible. you beat me to it while i was typing! serial to parallel works well for the pirnters that are still made that are intelligent to work with the adapters. there's not much left to work with in terms of processing in the new printers IIRC. jt ™. Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF
thelip Full Member USA 729 Posts	Posted - 12 Jul 2002 : 09:58:17 quote: Hello, I have a 266mhz eMachine ... I had a 333 emachine and that is about 99% of the reason I switched to macs. I'll try to keep it short since i tend to ramble: Good luck with Linux, the last version I tried was Suse 6.2 (i think) and that wouldn't install. I tried many other linux flavors as well, red hat, mandrake, etc. The problem i was having on that machine was that the video ram was shared with the system ram. They put a rage IIc chipset on the mobo, but it was heavily stripped of functionality. Some apps crapped themselves with the whole video problem, especially linux. Emachines caused me to damn pcs for eternity and i say leave it be. Find a cheap PPC and use that OWcomputing is selling the VST pci ata card for 47.99. I have one and it works great. Of course my post is slightly biased with the hell i had with that cursed emachine. _______________________ Sgt. Thelip Heavy Weapons Specialist - 950 division Liberated Macs: 12 SEE IF MY NEWTON IS ONLINE AT nsa68k.kicks-ass.net *
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 12 Jul 2002 : 10:24:14 quote: quote: Hello, I have a 266mhz eMachine ... I had a 333 emachine and that is about 99% of the reason I switched to macs. . . Emachines caused me to damn pcs for eternity and i say leave it be. . . . . . . Of course my post is slightly biased with the hell i had with that cursed emachine. let me see if i understand this correctly!?!!! you got angry with your computer's compatibility, so you switched from a manufacturer that: builds design (tho freakin'ugly!) oriented, underpowered, semicompatible hardware inside non-standardized enclosures with incompatible motherboard implementations of video, etc. and this prompted your switch to a company that: builds design . . . . . . <rolleyes> HAR! now THAT's an interesting move! a good one IMHO, but interesting nonetheless! thinks: maybe in the sense of the chinese proverb . . . jt ™. Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF
thelip Full Member USA 729 Posts	Posted - 12 Jul 2002 : 10:40:35 yeah so? lol.... it made sense at the time. the reason i wanted to switch to linux was due to windows sucking, that didn't work out so i moved to my next alternative, macs. so far so good. _______________________ Sgt. Thelip Heavy Weapons Specialist - 950 division Liberated Macs: 12 SEE IF MY NEWTON IS ONLINE AT nsa68k.kicks-ass.net *
mac-man6 Junior Member Canada 217 Posts	Posted - 12 Jul 2002 : 11:03:04 Thanks for the really fast replies!, The pc would be in the closet or basement and dragged out like every month to back up the iMac. I just want to be able to transfer my files on to it's HD without binhexing or compressing, just transfer them like it was a networked mac HD. ------------------ Mac SE 4/40 Mac Classic II 4/40 Mac IIx 8/160 Mac IIvi 8/260 Mac Quadra 650 32/260 Mac Quadra 650 64/350 via basilisk II iMac 333 How you like d'em apples?!
mac-man6 Junior Member Canada 217 Posts	Posted - 20 Jul 2002 : 22:54:02 I think I'll just use Basilisk II and emulate a quadra 650, why did I look anywhere else?! ------------------ Mac SE 4/40 Mac Classic II 4/40 Mac IIx 8/160 Mac IIvi 8/260 Mac Quadra 650 32/260 Mac Quadra 650 64/350 via basilisk II iMac 333 How you like d'em apples?!
mac-man6 Junior Member Canada 217 Posts	Posted - 15 Aug 2002 : 15:06:34 Hey Hey, the best OS running on a PC and for networking to a mac is - Mac!. That's right, I finally did it and I got my iMac 333 hooked up to an eMachine running Basilisk II running System 7.5, thinking it's a Quadra 650. It works and I can transfer files. The speed is decent over the ethernet, about 500k/s. I don't have to deal with windows, linux or any other x86 OS and I get to stick with Mac. I was worried about it because the last time I hooked a PC to my mac it blew the Power Supply on my real Quadra 650. Anyways, 68k software AND hardware rules!. ------------------ Mac SE 4/40 Mac Classic II 4/40 Mac IIx 8/160 Mac IIvi 8/260 Mac Quadra 650 32/260 Mac Quadra 650 64/350 via basilisk II iMac 333 How you like d'em apples?!

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