> I'm not fond of MacPPC machines for the very reason many people love them: > the style. B The cute cases are a pain in the butt to deal with
I second that. I had to replace the HD in my emac and I literally had to take the motherboard out to get access. -- Jeremy Chase http://twitter.com/jeremychase On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Nick Holland <n...@holland-consulting.net> wrote: > On 11/05/10 08:46, Felipe Mesquita de Oliveira wrote: >> >> Hi All, >> >> I'm long time far from OpenBSD world, but planning to come back. >> The plan is to buy an old machine, but, maybe try an new platform, if the >> investment worths... >> >> I have these options, all in the same price range: >> >> A) Sun Fire V100 UltraSPARC IIi 650 Mhz - 2x160Gb Hd - 2Gb RAM - CDROM -> >> US$ 350 >> >> B) Apple Power PC G4 733 Mhz - 768 Gb RAM - 38Gb HD -> B US$ 320,00 >> >> C) Atlhon 64 X2 +5200, 2 GB RAM, 160Gb HD -> B US$ 320,00 >> >> The idea is to build an server with: WWW/Email/Firewall funcionalities, >> with >> better stablity as possible. >> >> I don't think that I will need to upgrade for an period, but pieces that >> have mechanical components (Hd, cooler) may be a problem, if they are >> platform-exclusive... >> >> Thanks for any help, and sorry for any mistake in my English.. >> >> Best Regards, >> Felipe >> SP-Brazil > > well... B Given that choice, I'd go for the Athlon if you need performance > (you probably won't), or the Sun Fire v100 if you want to learn something > new. > > I'm not fond of MacPPC machines for the very reason many people love them: > the style. B The cute cases are a pain in the butt to deal with -- I use a > lot of wire rack shelving units, I actually have to velcro-tie the tower > macppc systems to the rack to keep the bottom handle from slipping over the > front of the shelf and ending up on the floor. > > The prices on all of them seem high to me, at least in my market. B That > doesn't mean much. B :) > > One thing to consider is what happens if the box itself fails. B OpenBSD is > great about moving disks to new hardware in the same platform, but if your > Sun fails, you need a compatible sun, if your MacPPC fails, you need another > macppc, if your amd64 fails, you need another amd64 (or i386, if you have > installed OpenBSD/i386). B So, if you run on a macppc or sun system, in the > event of failure, you will need to put your hands on a similar machine > quickly. B The 160G disks in the Sun Fire v100 might hurt you in that regard > -- a lot of the Sun IDE disk systems are hw limited to 128G, so you won't be > able to stick your 160G disks in an Ultra5, Ultra10, or a Blade100 should > your v100 fail. B If you go with this machine, I'd put smaller disks in it in > case you have to fall back to a U5/U10. > > If you have to do a cross-platform move, it will require restoring data from > your backup, you can't (in general) mount disks from one platform in another > and read the data. > > > Nick.
