Access to machines with old OS versions/architectures, like 10.4, 10.5, ... ppc

[Eric Gallager]

As far as access to old hardware goes, I have an old PowerPC iMac G3
running 10.3.9 sitting in my basement gathering dust (which is too old
to even build base, so I am not sure why I even mentioned it...), and
an old white plastic MacBook running 10.5/i386, which I do not think I
have installed MacPorts on (yet), but I probably could do so easily...
I am pretty sure that it does have Fink and TigerBrew on it though. I
suppose I could set it up as a server, but seeing as it is a laptop,
it would feel kind of weird to leave it just sitting there running all
the time...

The laptop I currently use (a 13" mid-2009 MacBook Pro running
10.6/x86_64) could also be considered "old", but there is no way that
I am letting other people ssh into my machine while I am also using it
myself. I suppose I can see what I can do about the other, older one
though...


On 6/5/14, Mojca Miklavec <mojca at macports.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was wondering if there was any chance/interest to set up a bunch of
> computers with different architectures and OS versions installed (but
> mainly setups like 10.4/PPC, 10.4/i386, 10.5/PPC, 10.6/x86_64) so that
> a few trusted developers could have ssh access to those machines in
> order to be able to test and fix issues on those machines every now
> and then.
>
> I know that these OSes are no longer officially supported and I'm
> aware that a lot of software will simply stop working on the old boxes
> at some point (Fink uses branches: if new software version doesn't
> support the old OS, it stays at the old version; of course there are
> drawbacks to that approach as well), but I imagine that there are:
> - people or companies willing to donate old functional hardware
> - probably some individuals willing to plug them in somewhere
> - developers willing to play and nail some of the problems/bugs down
>
> (A similar, but different feature would be a slightly more capable
> machine running the latest OS for developers with older hardware and
> software.)
>
> Is there anyone else who would find such a setup useful?
>
> Mojca
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