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

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:23 PM, Eric Gallager wrote:
> 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...),

It would be useful if Tiger could be installed on 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...

In any case (laptop, iMac or MacPro), someone needs to pay the
electricity bill and someone needs to provide sufficient bandwidth.
That someone doesn't necessarily have to be the same as people who
have extra pieces of hardware that are doing nothing else but
collecting dust.

> 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.

No, certainly no personal/working/main machines. Just old hardware
with a clean OS with Xcode, X11 and other requirements installed (I'm
not yet sure how one could avoid installing a complete MacPords in
each user's home dir).

(I also wonder if Apple has some old hardware to donate to such project.)


But even more important than doing the hardware count now is to
discuss whether there is sufficient demand and human power to organize
the project: find a place with electricity, bandwidth, a sysadmin to
install the required software, figure out how to set up the user
accounts, organize collection of the hardware, ... I'm almost sure
that getting a few old macs shouldn't be a problem.

On the other hand, before starting the hardware collection, we could
just as well start with a single Tiger/Leopard PPC machine at a single
location and see how much demand there is for such a "service" and how
many problems can be expected.

Mojca