[Asterisk-Dev] X100P question

[Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists]

On Tue, 7 Sep 2004 07:25:46 -0400, Steve Szmidt <steve at szmidt.org> wrote:
> How about the G3's? Would they not be even better as they have both PCI and
> 10/100 NIC's?

Of course a G3 model will be more powerful than the old pre-G3 PM 9xxx
series. The reason why I mentioned the old PM 9xxx series was simply
cost. Somebody who is not familiar with Macs is likely to want to test
this first at minimal cost before committing to a different hardware
platform.

The PM 9xxx are available at bargain prices on the second hand market
because they are the last generation of Macs before Apple switched
their OS over to BSD. Those don't run Mac OS X, at least not
officially. As a result many Mac users who want to run OSX have dumped
those boxes and there is a good supply of second hand hardware without
much demand. To anybody who is looking for a bargain machine to run
LinuxPPC, those PowerMac 9xxx are an excellent opportunity in terms of
price/performance and price/quality.

The story with G3 Macs is a bit different. All G3 Macs run OSX. The
two earliest G3 models (a desktop and a tower) have recently lost OSX
support, which is to say they run OSX 10.2 (aka Jaguar) but they don't
officially run OSX 10.3 (aka Panther). As a result, those two are also
now showing up at bargain prices in the second hand market. All other
G3s do run OSX including the latest version and consequently they are
much more expensive. In general Macs keep their value for a long time.
It is only the machines that don't officially run OSX which are
available at junk prices.

But once you have satisfied yourself that Asterisk on LinuxPPC is for
you, there is of course no reason why you shouldn't go for something
more recent and spend a little more.

By careful though with the so called Blue & White G3 which I call the
Lemontosh. Most of the time Apple's hardware is rock solid. However,
the Blue & White G3 is one of those rare cases where they did screw
up. There are two revisions, A and B. The revision A machines are to
be avoided at any cost. They had a bug in the hard disk controller
chip on the motherboard which has caused many folks a lot of trouble.
Unfortunately you need to open the case and look at the controller
chip to know whether it is a revision A or a revision B machine. So,
if in doubt, don't buy a Blue & White G3, unless you are looking for a
nice looking door stop.


Last but not least I'd like to mention that anybody who would like to
test the new Xserve G5 1U servers with Asterisk on Yellow Dog Linux v4
and Digium cards should contact Kai Staats at Terra Soft Solutions,
the developers/sponsors of YDL.

It was Terra Soft who sponsored the work Digium did to make Asterisk
and Zaptel work on LinuxPPC. They even used to be a Digium reseller. I
am sure that they will be supportive to anyone who wants to do any
Asterisk related work or testing on Mac hardware with YDL. Depending
on what it is for, they might even loan some hardware. Talk to Kai and
see what he says.

You will find Terra Soft at http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/tss_home.shtml

hope this helps
regards
benjk

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