Just got my replacement server box running after only a small bit of hair tearing . . .
My ancient 9500/OS 9.1 server is acting up and I figured this'd be a good time to replace it with an OS X box. I dug out my not-quite-as-old 9600 desktop (768MB ram, 450G3, 3 x 9GB scsi drives) and went about the process of installing Tiger Server. Well, the damn bootleg CD images I have are broken, that took several hours to finally accept. So I hauled out my real Tiger DVD and using an external FW DVD-R drive with XPostFacto (and a 'helper' drive) I finally got it up and running. It's pretty snappy, even with the old Rage128 B&W display card. Pretty cool being able to install via a PCI FW adapter. XPostFacto rocks!
The only thing that didn't work right out of the box was my RealTek RTL8139 card. The Realtek driver is rejected. I dug around for any other 10/100 NICs, but the only thing I could find are some old AsanteFAST 10/100 cards. Hmmm, I googled for 'Tiger+DEC2114' and lo-and-behold, it turns out Tiger natively supports the chip! Woot!
I just finished updating to 10.4.3 . . . too wiped right now to do the actual box swap with the old server, save that for another day. But I'm really pleased so far!
dan k
Server's online (see my sig for Carracho address), pretty cool to be running the latest Mac OS on an 8 year old 9600/200. I figured it'd be more trouble than it was, at least the Tiger install, anyhow. The key was having two HDs and an external FW DVD-R. Using XPostFacto4 I was able to designate the second HD as a 'helper' which allowed the FW drive to be seen for the install. Totally painless (once I figured the method), XPostFacto really does rock!
Biggest issues are software, for example apparently I can't run my old Timbuktu under Tiger.
I've been using VNC (so i don't have to keep running up and down the basement stairs!) but it doesn't have file transfer capabilities AFAIK.
I was curious to see how file transfer speeds over my 100BT LAN measured up to the old server's TB2 speeds. Under the old server, 100MB transfer with TB2 would have taken about 40 sec (TB2 v6 under OS 9.2), roughly 2.5MB/s.
Under Tiger - via file sharing, roughly 4 mins for 100MBs, yeesh!, ftp took 45 sec (2.5MB/s, not bad!), 90 secs for Carracho (1.1MB/s.) Well, I can live with those ftp speeds, if I can just figure out how to set up a root folder for the ftp 'server' component of Tiger. Not sure where the interface for that is . . . other than the basic on/off switch under 'Sharing'.
FYI - 9600 G3/450 768MB ram, 2 x ATTO PSC UW, OHCI FW, Acard ATA-66, Rage128, AsanteFast 10/100, 2 x Atlas II 9GB UW, 1 9GB Seagate UW, 1 x 1GB narrow Seagate. Plus there's the external Seagate Elite HDs - 3 x 23GB, 3 x 47GB
dan k