[rescue] Mac Appliance

[joshua d boyd]

On Thu, Aug 02, 2001 at 01:49:12PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On August 2, joshua d boyd wrote:
> > > LC III?  Doorstop time! 8-)
> > > 
> > > Server appliance?  More like something to use as a bookend...
> > 
> > Hey, it should be significantly faster than a Sun3.  Uhm, but then look
> > how I use my Sun3.  But again, the Sun3 draws a rediculus amount of power,
> > and the LC3 wouldn't draw as much.  However, perhaps an IPX would be more
> > practicaly.
> 
>   Huh?  An LC-III is a 68030 at 25MHz...only marginally faster than a
> Sun3/60 (68020 at 20MHz, and of course that's assuming that's the only
> difference between the two systems) and certainly quite a bit slower
> than a Sun3/400 (68030 at 40MHz)....

Are the 80s and 400s technically Sun3x machines?  I was assuming that like
the jump from 386 to 486 that going from 020 to 030 would be significant,
even if the clock doesn't really change.  I know I much prefered a 33mhz
486 to the 40mhz 386 I used.  I'm sure there are other differences.  I'm
told that the LCIIIs SCSI subsystem is rather braindead, but then, you saw
the SCSI board I have in my Sun3.  I also know that the 030 has a built in
MMU, but the Sun3 uses a Sun supplied MMU (as opposed to the official
Motorola MMU).  I don't know how the MMU performances would effect real
world performance.

And then, there is memory.  Getting memory for an LCIII is easy.  Getting
memory for a Sun3 is hard.  So, we would be talking about a 36meg machine,
versus an 8meg machine.

I don't really know what I would need such a small server for, other than
perhaps acting as a boot and dhcp server.  But for that I think an LCIII
could be perfect.

But, I think I'll just wait till I have a chance to snag another SS2 or
IP[C|X] machine.  They also seem to be kinda cheap (only kinda because
people keep wanting large amounts of cash for shipping a machine without
memory or HD)

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd