19-year-old Mac doing server duty with NetBSD ... plus even older Macs serving up Web pages
A Macintosh IIci -- with 25 MHz of CPU power -- equipped with NetBSD is currently serving up Web pages and somehow surviving.
If you want to turn your ancient Mac into a server, start here (to use Mac software and find out about other ancient Mac servers), or here (to use NetBSD).
And if a IIci is too new for you, here's an Apple ][e (circa 1984) Web server, and a Mac SE. And here's an Apple Lisa server. (Thanks to The Old Apple Web Server Directory).
I looked for a similar homage to old PCs as servers, but all I could find were endless reiterations of the old "Hey, if you have an old PC, why not turn it into a web/print/file server?" I didn't see any "Here's my 386SX-25 or 486-66 that serves up Web pages."
Comments
I wish I could make my G5 1.8 work as well as any of my PC's. It is slow, noisy and, did I mention, slow.
Posted by: Aaron | February 26, 2008 5:49 AM
I've been experimenting with Apache in OpenBSD. I'll be writing about it soon.
Posted by: Steven Rosenberg | February 26, 2008 10:53 AM
I ran a web server (it was some kind of compressed linux boot floppy thing) for a few days just to see if it could on a amd 386 (can't remember the speed) It had 4mb of ram if i remember corectly.
It ended up going to a friend to paly with, with openGEM and freeDOS on it.
Posted by: Crispin | February 27, 2008 8:44 AM
Damn, and I only recently shut down my 486sx/25 that had been running RedHat Linux 4 and apache faithfully for years. I got tired of the noisy power supply fan, and amazingly loud disk drive, and also wanted to free up some space. Damn those old boxes where huge !
Posted by: Smitty | February 27, 2008 11:14 AM
You probably won't find a web site showing old PCs being used as servers because it's been done for so long now that the novelty is gone.
Posted by: Votre | February 27, 2008 12:33 PM
Well, the older they get, the more novel it becomes, I imagine.
Posted by: Steven Rosenberg
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February 27, 2008 2:09 PM