[X-Unix] Orig G3 desktop and OS X

[William H. Magill]

On 21 Oct, 2004, at 15:51, R Waechter wrote:
> According to the official word, my original (beige) G3 desktop
> "will not run OS X".  This is because it does not have either
> firewire or usb on the motherboard.
>
> Has anyone used any third-party software that would allow
> OS X to be run on this machine? And if so, has it 'worked'
> (and was it reasonable in the speed department?)
>
> I want to turn this into my fileserver and for that I don't
> need the graphical bit so much, but I really really do need
> access to a real command line.

There are several different "original" Beige G3 machines.

I happen to have a Rev A motherboard, tower which has its own quirks.

It has an upgraded 333 mhz CPU, Adaptec SCSI card and RACO FireWire/USB 
card.
(And boots off DEC (aka Compaq) StorageWorks disk drives.)

It's presently running 10.2.8 with no problems ... other than being 
pathologically slow.
(I use it as a webserver when the SCSI card doesn't hang on me.
I have an Adaptec SCSI card which gives me problems, but that is a 
separate issue; I've just been too lazy to replace it with a reliable 
card.)

I also have a 9600 running 10.something via XPostFacto. (That's REALLY 
slow!!!)

             http://www.opendarwin.org/projects/XPostFacto/

XPostFacto will also allow you to load 10.3 on a Beige G3.

Follow the links from the above site to the the OWC site and read about 
the known problems -- like the AV personality cards not working on the 
Beige G3, etc.

In the end, it's not that you can't run OS X on these older machines, 
it's just that at some point it's really not worth the aggravation.

Network file servers are inherently slow when compared to local disk 
access on a good day.

A 300 mhz machine works pretty well as a Webserver because the overall 
I/O load is light. However, as a file server, even with the Ultra-SCSi 
drives I have, the I/O capabilities are simply slower than those my 
newer machines, and it shows. That coupled with the fact that it has 
only a 10 meg ethernet interface, means that your file transfer rates 
are potentially, painfully slow ... especially if you are running on a 
corporate net where there is other traffic.

I find performance "acceptable" for "small" files being accessed by my 
800 mhz G4, but for large file transfers, I wind up using my FireWire 
drive (aka iPod) so I don't have sit around waiting for them to 
transfer.

One last comment -- don't expect Tiger to run on these old machines, at 
all. There is evidently an "endian" issue between the G4's emulation 
and the G5 which will potentially effect quite a bit of software. Not 
the core Darwin stuff but the GUI level apps.

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
# Beige G3 - Rev A motherboard - 768 Meg
# Flat-panel iMac (2.1) 800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg
# PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg]- Tru64 5.1a
# XP1000  [Alpha EV6]
magill at mcgillsociety.org
magill at acm.org
magill at mac.com
whmagill at gmail.com