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| Piece of shit? by Tansin A. Darcos (TDARCOS) 04/27/2013, 2:50am PDT | ||||
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Entropy Stew wrote: The fact remains that I think $100 is around the price range of an operating 64-bit 1.8ghz processor with 750MB of memory and 80GB of disk space. I've seen slightly better G5s on eBay - 1GB memory and 160GB of disk space - and they're around $150 plus shipping, but the ones there only have OS X 10.2. This machine is functional; it will operate, software can be downloaded to it, it can be used for useful work. This is the least expensive way I know of to get into an Apple computer by buying a used one in PowerPC architecture. As Jonsey pointed out in a reply, he'd be interested in your alleged worthless extra laptop machine to test his software for the Mac. Plus since no one is really making software for PowerPC anymore, I'd guess it's absolutely immune to being hit by viruses or malware. It is partially an experiment and partially a learning experience. I'm going to see if I can get Apache, PHP and MySQL running on it and use it as a test server for testing Web apps. For some reason the OS claims the webserver is running but it doesn't respond on localhost, 127.0.0.1 or its internal address on my router, 192.168.0.134. I solved that problem by downloading XAMPP for Mac, which is a full implementation of Apache, PHP, MySQL plus includes Perl and a few other things. This allows creation of test and development applications; because it doesn't include security features (the root account for MySQL has a blank password) it's not recommended for production work. In fact, I had my router open port 80 to pass HTTP traffic to this box, then typed in the actual public IP address assigned to me by Comcast; it connects, but for security reasons XAMPP specifically refuses requests not from the local intranet unless you enable it in the configuration file. I tried one of the $9 Tenda Wireless USB adapters I use in my Windows boxes, and went to Tenda's website and downloaded the driver for PowerPC Mac OS X, then installed it. Disconnect the network cable and it works. Reboot the machine and it starts up the software automatically to control the adapter same as Windows. So now the machine has the fixed address I had previously assigned on the router to the MAC address for that adapter, 192.128.0.104. So, anyway, I also downloaded VNC server for PowerPC Mac, and got it installed, up and running, then shut the machine down and disconnected everything but the $9 Tenda Wireless USB adapter and the power cord. I can use the VNC client from my Windows 7 box to connect to the Mac desktop. Resize it to 640x480 and it runs in a window instead of having scroll bars. Since it's on a local network the speed is almost as fast as it is when it's direct to the monitor. Used the XAMPP control panel to start up Apache, MySQL and FTP. I can get the Mac to talk to itself with Firefox as the website localhost, or I can connect to its IP address from another machine on my network and the XAMPP sample page comes up. I can use MySQLAdmin to create databases and design tables in preparation to writing code, either as PHP or using something to talk to MySQL to use it as an external database (or possibly to give a desktop application the choice of using a local database or using a networked one). So now I can put this machine over in a corner of the other room - it doesn't even have to be in here with me any more - and use it for program development and web testing. Since it's a PowerPC machine, even if I open it up to access from the full Internet, there's no way to root the box since script kiddies won't know how to crack a PowerPC machine, and most crackers are lazy and don't know - and won't bother with - PowerPC assembly to try things like buffer overflows or other tricks to 0wn the b0x. Doesn't matter that the underlying architecture is not x86 or x86-64; I'm not writing assembly language, for desktop applications I'm programming in Pascal (or C, if I absolutely have to). Free Pascal provides a means to write the same code on Windows, Mac and Linux and the non-machine-specific and non OS-specific parts will work the same, including the forms construction for windowed applications, or ordinary file and pipe input/output for command-line based tool development. If I'm doing web-based development, well, you use interpreted PHP and MySQL (or some other database system) and you again don't care what the underlying architecture is. Anything that can host the output of a C compiler and send data over the Internet can be used to run a web server (doesn't necessarily have to be Apache as long as it supports PHP and MySQL or some other database); it could be a z/System mainframe for all that it matters. In fact, a few years ago one major automaker - I think it was either BMW or Daimler for their Mercedes Benz vehicles - announced they'd be putting a computer with webserver into their cars so that a technician could simply connect a laptop with a web browser to find out information about the state of the car. Don't know if they did - most cars (since about 1996 I think) have an access port for this purpose, it's the thing that both that car diagnosis tool CarMD, and Progressive Insurance's snitch device that monitors how you drive so that in exchange for narcing on yourself you get a discount, use - but the tools are there to do it, and it also means that you can hide the details for interfacing with anything by using a webserver as a frontend, no matter how complicated or nasty they are. My HP all-in-one (printer, scanner, fax machine) has a built-in webserver so if you log into its IP address with Firefox it can show you a visual display of its status including an estimate of how much ink it has left. But you tell me, since this machine is a "piece of shit," i.e. valueless and not worth the $130, how do I have the ability to be able to get exposure to the Mac environment, discover its differences and a machine which has the capability to create programs on it so I can discover what has to be done differently or what works differently, for less than US$130 plus the $30 video cable I needed? Come on, tell me how I could have done it cheaper; I'm all ears. Otherwise, shut your mouth until you can come up with a constructive solution and stop making spurious claims of worthlessness, since you haven't a clue and clearly don't have the slightest idea about what you're talking about and you're just mouthing words having no significance whatsoever, "a sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing." |
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