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[Dan Caugherty <caffeine1 AT nc.rr.com>]

On Friday, October 25, 2002, at 08:44 AM, bob AT purple.ils.unc.edu wrote:

> Greetings, all. This morning I saw a Mac Workgroup Server 8550/132, 
> unused,
> on sale for $99. I wondered whether anyone had an opinion whether it's 
> worth
> it, just for something to monkey around with at home. It's got, I 
> think,
> 16MB RAM, 2GB SCSI hard drive, 4x CD-ROM, ships with OS 7.5.
>
> Any thoughts?

Well, there's my .sig; that counts as a thought, right? 8-)

As for the Mac.. well, about 12 months ago I sold my
lowly PowerCenter Pro 180 (a Mac clone), even after a
G3 upgrade, hard drive upgrade, etc. etc.  I tormented
it by making it a dual-boot LinuxPPC/MacOS box as well,
until I gave up and bought a cheap G4 Cube for MacOS X.

Chances are, you're thinking of using this puppy either as
a cheap networking appliance (router, print server) or just
another applications platform.  For the former, you'll be
better off buying a cheap Intel box for Linux IMO.
Nonetheless, as a LinuxPPC or YellowDog Linux platform, this is
an interesting idea -- tho' I see more DIMMs & a larger
drive in your future if you do it, hence my reservations.

As for the latter, and using it as a "classic" MacOS box --
well, why?  Do you have legacy Mac apps you can't part with?
The Classic MacOS was not l33t as operating systems go,
UI notwithstanding.  (The only thing I use "Classic" for is
Quicken, and that's only because I'm too cheap to buy the
latest version.)  And even if this machine could boot
MacOS X, it would be sssllooowww.

My $.02: pass it up unless you can't find a better bargain.


l8r,


+--Dan Caugherty ------------caffeine1 AT nc.rr.com------+
|  "It's a shame that an entire family can be ripped  |
|     apart by something as simple as wild dogs."     |
+-----------------------------------------------------+