MkLinux on a pimped-out Apple Workgroup Server 9150
MkLinux and the pimped-out Apple Workgroup Server 9150
In this first-person account, the author rebuilds a flaky Apple Workgroup Server 9150 and upgrades it with more RAM, a faster CPU, and various video cards to run MkLinux alongside classic Mac OS. The article also traces the history of Apple's server line, from the failed Macintosh Office and the Big Mac project to the A/UX-based Workgroup Servers, explaining how these machines paved the way for the Apple Network Server.
As an upstart in the age of microcomputers, Apple never had a history of making big iron, and the emergence of its server line can actually be traced back almost directly to the failed Macintosh Office concept.
- jnwatson
Some teenagers saved up money for a car. I saved up money for a PowerMac 7100. It cost me $3k, with a solid student discount.
I used it throughout college and beyond. I upgraded the RAM, the L2 cache. I even added one of the Sonnet G3 cards the article shows.
During its latter years, it only ran MkLinux.
- zdw
My first desktop linux box was a PowerMac 8100/80 with MkLinux, probably sometime in 1996. At launch it didn't have support for multi-button mice, which made X11 kind of hard to use (center-button was the only way to paste text in many cases back then), as Apple only shipped a one button mouse by default so that was all that was supported.
As an impertinent high schooler, I emailed Logitech asking for one of their 3 button ADB trackballs, saying I was going to add 3 button support to MkLinux. They actually replied and sent me one. I managed to come up with some code that kind of worked, and sent off a patch, but by that time I think someone else fixed the multibutton mouse issue before me.
Good times back then. It was such a step up in terms of multitasking, and a step back in terms of UI consistency from classic MacOS.
When I went off to university a year later, Apple wasn't doing so hot so, so I built myself a Pentium Pro machine. Prices on those parts went through the floor as the Pentium II had come out, and Linux was all 32 bit so no 16 bit perf issues the PPro was known for. Dual CPU board (single CPU at first) and as another processor and memory upgrades getting cheaper it was a nice machine through all of college.
Then after graduation I got a job after MacOS X came out, and jumped back to Apple products as they were the only game for unix on a laptop with power management that didn't suck in the early 2000's.
Good times.
- rwmj
At an early start up I worked for, we had a bunch of PowerPC Mac pizza boxes running System 7. The experience was terrible, they crashed or locked up constantly.
I eventually took a few of them and installed MkLinux and they were rock-solid workhorses for years after, doing things like light file serving, Usenet proxy and a firewall.