[KLUG Advocacy] Re: BSD Amiga vs BSD Mac

[Mike Williams]

Moved to advocacy since it's getting pretty off topic.

On Fri, 16 Aug 2002 12:00:01 -0400
novices-request@kalamazoolinux.org wrote:

> >>>I have a friend who is becoming interested in LINUX and I'd like to set 
> >>>RH up on one of his ancient spare machines.  In particular, he would 
> >>>like to use a 32 MHz 68030 with 20Mb RAM and a 40Mb hard drive.
> >>>Any chance we can install LINUX here?
> >>Linux, maybe.  Redhat, NO.  
> >>RH doesn't make a Mac distro. (at least not lately)
> >>I think Debian does, not sure about SuSE and Mandrake.
> >>Yellowdog is made for the MAC.
> >>With that limited hardware, I doubt the machine would be useful for much
> >>other than typing a few commands at the console prompt.  If it's even
> >>supported and meets minimum requirements for an install.
> >It might be worth giving NetBSD a shot.  Granted this was a long time
> >ago, but I know a guy who ran a very functional mail and personal file
> >server off of similar hardware with NetBSD.  It did just fine as a
> >server.  I think the hardware was a 68020 powered Amiga but I wouldn't
> >swear to that.  Could have been an 030, but it wasn't anything stronger
> >than that.
> 
> Yes, a Mac may share the same CPU as the Amiga,  but not much else.  The
> Amiga is (was) a thoughtfully designed system with a gang of
> sub-processors for I/O, Video, Audio, etc...  The 'vintage' Macs have a
> very winmodem-esque design,  from the people I've talked too performance
> sucks.  Every wonder why it took Apple sssoooooooooo long to create a
> preemptive OS?  And they basically had to ditch OS9 to do it?  That
> hardware platform wasn't helping.

You're preaching to the choir about the Amiga's hardware architecture,
but it's only a factor if the OS accesses it properly.  Any idea how
much of the custom chips (Agnes, Denise, Paula, Buster:  can't believe I
STILL remember their names) does / did NetBSD 68k actually use?  If it
was fairly generic 680x0 code, wouldn't it run on a Mac IIvx at almost
the same speed as on an Amiga?
 
> (Nothing against Apple,  or the utility of these machines as what they
> were.  But a spade is a spade;  those machines were crap.  I actually
> read through the hardware specs once...... ick......  Useful as a
> workstation running a preemptive multi-user POSIX-ish OS?  No way!)

Most of the Amiga's fancy chips were devoted to multimedia and I/O if I
remember correctly.  I've never read through the specs of either machine
in any detail, but with the exception of Agnes handling some memory
access chores, how much would a text-based server use them?  I guess
there's hard drive I/O, but the IDE-based Amigas (4000, mostly) had
pretty brainless IDE controllers.  

-- 
Mike Williams <knightperson@zuzax.com>