Server…

[eyoungren]

Thanks to the generosity of a forum member, I now have a 450mhz PowerMac G3 running OS X 10.4.11 Server.

I have a Firewire drive dock on the way and then this Mac will be handling my Time Machine backups as well as any other server uses I can put it to.

1GB Ram, 1x40GB HD, 1x120GB HD.

PS. I have it running headless, i.e, no video card and accessible visually only through VNC.

Yet again, OSX VNC for the win with it's ability to load VNC sharing before the login window!

 

[macgeek18]

I'm going to have to make one of my Macs a server now!

 

[Slix]

Awesome! Always nice to see a B&W G3 in use. They're fairly noisy because they don't actually sleep, but as a server, it works perfectly, since those don't sleep generally. ;D

Do you happen to know of any guides on how to use an older Mac as a networked Time Machine? I think I've searched for it before, but never found a good answer.

I've got an iMac G4 running as a server when I need it, for .dmg files I might need, and for NetBooting!

 

[eyoungren]

Awesome! Always nice to see a B&W G3 in use. They're fairly noisy because they don't actually sleep, but as a server, it works perfectly, since those don't sleep generally. ;D

Do you happen to know of any guides on how to use an older Mac as a networked Time Machine? I think I've searched for it before, but never found a good answer.

I've got an iMac G4 running as a server when I need it, for .dmg files I might need, and for NetBooting!

Specific guides, no…

But I've had one Mac or another set up with hard drives to take TM backups for a few years now.

First it was an iBook, then my Quicksilver, now my Quad. On Moday, when a FW dock I ordered arrives the duty will actually fall to the G3.

It depends on what you want to do. My TM backups are set to occur from anywhere. That is, my laptop can run a regualr TM backup from a coffee shop, the G5 I have at work can run it. All backups go home.

You need to make sure that TM is set to use network disks and then you need to open the AFP port (548) in your router and direct it to the Mac that will be receiving the backup.

If you plan to do TM backups only inside your home network you don't need to open the port, just make sure network drives are enabled.

Of course the drive the TM backup is on will need to be shared, so file sharing must be on for that Mac.

Lastly, I got tired of trying to keep track of IP addresses so I paid for a DNS service to resolve my home IP address to a domain name. So, whenever the IP address changes I don't have to mess with the Macs since they simply back up to a domain address and mount the TM backup drive now.

 

[abundantmussel]

I used my 450MHz sawtooth for the exact same thing. Thinking of swapping my quicksilver into the role tough and using the sawtooth for Mac OS 9.

 

[eyoungren]

I used my 450MHz sawtooth for the exact same thing. Thinking of swapping my quicksilver into the role tough and using the sawtooth for Mac OS 9.

I have a 35mhz Yikes serving as an Applescript server here at work. Handles things well.

Using your QS for this will probably give you some more power for tasks though.

 

[abundantmussel]

Main reason would be to upgrade from Tiger server to Leopard server. And also the QS is going to waste at the moment I have a sawtooth, QS and an MDD just lined up next to each other doing nothing.

 

[AphoticD]

YServ

I just love the B&W. I mean I like the look of my Sawtooth(s) as well, but the B&W just had a certain style that will never be seen again.

Would the B&W take a Gigabit Ethernet card upgrade or is the PCI bus too slow to make this a worthwhile upgrade?

 

[eyoungren]

YServ

I have a naming convention.

I just love the B&W. I mean I like the look of my Sawtooth(s) as well, but the B&W just had a certain style that will never be seen again.

I always liked seeing 'G3' through the side of the Mac. You don't get that with any G4.

Would the B&W take a Gigabit Ethernet card upgrade or is the PCI bus too slow to make this a worthwhile upgrade?

Probably, but my main network switch is 10/100 so even if I added that I could not take advantage of it.

 

[macgeek18]

I always loved the big G3 on the sides.

 

[MysticCow]

I don't know. Part of me would still prefer a Xserve G4 or G5. It'd be my 180,000 decibel crown jewel.

 

[eyoungren]

I don't know. Part of me would still prefer a Xserve G4 or G5. It'd be my 180,000 decibel crown jewel.

Yeah, I'd like one or two of those myself. Some year.

 

[Hrududu]

Would the B&W take a Gigabit Ethernet card upgrade or is the PCI bus too slow to make this a worthwhile upgrade?

Yup! Apple offered one as a BTO upgrade when the B&W was released.

 

[eyoungren]

Yup! Apple offered one as a BTO upgrade when the B&W was released.

I transferred my iTunes library from my Quad to my G3 the other night. About 25GBs. Took roughly about 20 minutes at 100 speeds and at one point was transferring a little over 9mb/second.

Gigabit is very nice and I'd love to have my home network set up this way but I was very impressed by this transfer nonetheless.

On another note, I was reminded of how easy it was to manipulate older versions of iTunes. I transferred the music library, placed it in the exact same spot on the G3 and then opened iTunes 4.0. It saw my library right away, including my direct radio stream.

All I had to do was reset preferences. Once I got sharing going iTunes 4.0 on the Quad connected right up.
[doublepost=1509750398][/doublepost]I have this coming Monday…Fantom Drives DataDock II.

It's got Firewire 400 (and 800) and I thought that would be the better interface than trying to mickey around with getting USB 2.0 to work on the G3. My current drive dock also seems to be touchy so another reason to use this.

I have two 1TB HDs that will go in it (the two being used now) and it will serve as my TM Backup/Storage/File server drive as the dock has RAID.

Looking forward to getting this going so my server can start doing what I want it to do.

 

[Hrududu]

I transferred my iTunes library from my Quad to my G3 the other night. About 25GBs. Took roughly about 20 minutes at 100 speeds and at one point was transferring a little over 9mb/second.

Gigabit is very nice and I'd love to have my home network set up this way but I was very impressed by this transfer nonetheless.

On another note, I was reminded of how easy it was to manipulate older versions of iTunes. I transferred the music library, placed it in the exact same spot on the G3 and then opened iTunes 4.0. It saw my library right away, including my direct radio stream.

All I had to do was reset preferences. Once I got sharing going iTunes 4.0 on the Quad connected right up.
[doublepost=1509750398][/doublepost]I have this coming Monday…Fantom Drives DataDock II.

It's got Firewire 400 (and 800) and I thought that would be the better interface than trying to mickey around with getting USB 2.0 to work on the G3. My current drive dock also seems to be touchy so another reason to use this.

I have two 1TB HDs that will go in it (the two being used now) and it will serve as my TM Backup/Storage/File server drive as the dock has RAID.

Looking forward to getting this going so my server can start doing what I want it to do.

Almost forgot about FantomDrives! My first ever CD burner came from them back in 2003. I needed Firewire since it was going on my B&W G3 and I spent a fortune on that thing. Still have it hooked up to the G5, but it doesn't do much work anymore.

 

[AphoticD]

I transferred my iTunes library from my Quad to my G3 the other night. About 25GBs. Took roughly about 20 minutes at 100 speeds and at one point was transferring a little over 9mb/second.

Gigabit is very nice and I'd love to have my home network set up this way but I was very impressed by this transfer nonetheless.

Nice. I’m thinking that could have been a bit of an optimistic 20mins though

I’ve seen my G5s push data around at 100-120MB/sec over GigE when transferring between SSD or RAID0 (eSATA) volumes. The FW400 cap is around 35MB/sec iirc.

When I replaced my aging 10/100 switch with a 5-port Netgear Gigabit switch (around $35), it made a huge difference for time machine backups. I set my Leopard+ machines to all backup to a 3TB eSATA drive and it shaved hours off the backup time.

 

[eyoungren]

Nice. I’m thinking that could have been a bit of an optimistic 20mins though

I’ve seen my G5s push data around at 100-120MB/sec over GigE when transferring between SSD or RAID0 (eSATA) volumes. The FW400 cap is around 35MB/sec iirc.

When I replaced my aging 10/100 switch with a 5-port Netgear Gigabit switch (around $35), it made a huge difference for time machine backups. I set my Leopard+ machines to all backup to a 3TB eSATA drive and it shaved hours off the backup time.

Part of my hesitation to switching to Gigabit Ethernet is based on my internet plan with my provider.

Transferring large amounts of files between computers like I did the other night is not a frequent occurence. Usually it's from one drive to another on one Mac or PC.

So my major uses for the network are downloading large files from the internet. Right now, the fastest my ISP offers is about 50-100 down and that's around $100 a month just for that service.

I don't see a point yet in having a Gig-E switch and replacing all my Cat-5 cables with Cat-6 when this is still so expensive and I don't do large amounts of file transfers - and the fastes my ISP offers is maxed out standard Ethernet.

One of these days when I can get that speed affordably with my ISP I will then have the bug in the back of my head to upgrade.

 

[MagicBoy]

I went Gigabit ethernet about 10 years ago. As long as your existing cables are CAT5, decent quality and there's no very long runs then you should be fine.A switch should be under $25 I guess. The latest branded one I bought for the living room was under £15 for a metal cased Netgear.

I don't particularly see the point with ISP speeds, it's more about file transfers speeds within the internal network. I'm backing up using time machine, and use a NAS as my primary data storage and for serving media. The nearer I can get to native disk speeds the better.

 

[eyoungren]

I went Gigabit ethernet about 10 years ago. As long as your existing cables are CAT5, decent quality and there's no very long runs then you should be fine.A switch should be under $25 I guess. The latest branded one I bought for the living room was under £15 for a metal cased Netgear.

I don't particularly see the point with ISP speeds, it's more about file transfers speeds within the internal network. I'm backing up using time machine, and use a NAS as my primary data storage and for serving media. The nearer I can get to native disk speeds the better.

Typically, the switches I get are 24 or more ports. I have a lot of attached devices to my network and I also like room. The current switch costs me somewhere between $50-$100 for that.

As far as my reasoning it goes like this. 100 speeds are fast enough for almost everything I do and tolerable for the very small amount of large ethernet transfers I do have.

So, until I can take advantage of Gig-E downloads from my ISP I see no need to upgrade my home network.

 

[MagicBoy]

I use a couple of 8 port switches which are at the sweet spot for price. 16 and 24 ports get exponentially more expensive. That said there's no reason not to mix 100mbps and Gigabit. You can use gigabit where connected machines would benefit most, like at the desk and 8 ports would likely be enough for that.

For example most of the stuff I've got plumbed into the living room switch is 100 only (sat receiver, Xbox, AV amp, Apple TV etc) but the HTPC benefits from gigabit when it's accessing data on the NAS, so for £15 it was a no brainer.

The internet backhaul links are usually the bottleneck in download performance. There's only one place I've seen the benefit of gigabit for internet transfers and that's at work which is connected to the network that connects the UK universities. I can happily max out the connection downloading ISOs from Microsoft. The other 99.9% of the time I get similar download speeds to home...

 

[AphoticD]

General internet speeds probably won’t take advantage of GigaBit for some time.

In Australia, we are currently in the middle of a rollout of our tax payer funded multi-billion dollar national broadband network(NBN) upgrade. Moving from ADSL2+ to fiber-optic NBN has been a huge political deal/fumble.

Although I am only a few hundred metres from the exchange, my “high speed” NBN internet plan still only sees about 2-3 MB/sec of real world transfer speed as most servers are operating on the other side of the world. For local networks it’s a bit faster, but hardly worth all the hype.

My setup goes:

> NBN modem with WiFi (5ghz) n network
> Mac Pro picks up the WiFi and reroutes it over Gigabit to a 5 port switch.
> The Gigabit switch is connected to 4 towers (Mac Pro + 3x G5s)
> the 5th port is connected to a 10/100 5 port switch, which is connected to other non-Gigabit devices (G4s, Mac mini, AppleTV or lesser machines
> I’d normally connect the laptops over WiFi unless doing time machine backups. I’ll plug a Gigabit capable PowerBook (15, 17”, TiBook) into a gigabit port, otherwise fall back on the 100mbit.

My ad-hoc setup is not perfect, but it’s fine for me and I can take advantage of GigE for high-speed local transfers where it suits me, but it has no impact or influence on the internet connection.

As @MagicBoy pointed out, your cat5 cabling should still support gigabit. I did put my towers on cat6 cabling, but only because I had some laying around.

Just check if your cat5 cables have 4x twisted pairs (8 colored wires connected at the plug ends). I’ve had some cat5 cables with 2x pairs and they will not support gigabit speeds.

 

[MagicBoy]

Good point on the cabling. I'm tending to use old cables liberated from buildings we closed at work, so they're very good quality Krone patch leads.

My setup :
ISP supplied fibre router with dual band ac wireless and a couple of gigabit ports. 40Mbps down/10Mbps up. One cable each running to :
8 port gigabit switch in the "office" with two NAS servers and various PCs and Macs cabled in.
8 port gigabit switch in the living room with various AV devices and the HTPC cabled in.

rMBP tends to run on ac Wireless most of the time which typically gets 500-800Mbps over 5Ghz a couple rooms away from the router.

 

[eyoungren]

I have this coming Monday…Fantom Drives DataDock II.

It's got Firewire 400 (and 800) and I thought that would be the better interface than trying to mickey around with getting USB 2.0 to work on the G3. My current drive dock also seems to be touchy so another reason to use this.

I have two 1TB HDs that will go in it (the two being used now) and it will serve as my TM Backup/Storage/File server drive as the dock has RAID.

Looking forward to getting this going so my server can start doing what I want it to do.

Quoting myself because this took FAR longer to show up then expected!

It took 15 days from posession by USPS to my mailbox.

USPS sent it from the main PHX regional annex to the wrong post office and that PO had to send it back to the regional annex! That added three days because by the time USPS turned it arround again and sent it to the correct post office it was Veterans Day!

USPS blew out the eBay delivery day by a week!

I hate them!

 

[eyoungren]

My son wanted a Belkin USB 2.0 Bluetooth adapter for Christmas so I ordered him one.

I've used these before, and my Quad uses the 100m range one (even though I have an Airport Express card).

But the seller was two weeks late in shipping, even after creating a label.

So the seller did me a nice turn. He upgraded the Belkin to the 100m range stick (which I have, first pic below) and threw in a Belkin F8T001 which is a different model but 10m range (second pic below)

So…I got to thinking since I had this spare 10m BT 2.0 USB stick.

Well, now my G3 Server has Bluetooth 2.0.

After a restart the icon appeared right in the menubar.

Just have to figure out what I am going to do with it.

 

[eyoungren]

Hehehehehehe!