>Hi Folks,
>
>I just visited a local elementary school computer lab with 24 PowerMac 7000
>series computers with OS 7.x
>
>Yes, they are "slow" and with limited capacity but they are networked.  Some
>are having serious hardware memory problems.  Unfortunately, after three
>defeats of the technology bond, there will me no replacements.   So, I'm
>thinking of volunteering as a SysAdmin and pumping these systems for all
>their worth.
>
>How can SQUEAK be made to run on the PowerMacs mentioned above?
>
>:-)  edwin

Well. Squeak should run on this machines. I've attempted to ensure 
that Squeak will run on System 7.5.5 machines. But to fully utilize 
'better' networking ie the ability not to drop most incoming 
connections as swikis they require Open Transport.

Also I'm sure I've a 7200 here that is running OS 9.1 You just need 
32mb of ram. However you might want to see what the impact 
performance wise is, and perhaps licence wise $$ before considering 
upgrading. Mind 9.1 is very stable and of course uptodate with all 
the new OS features.

The other thing is getting a reasonably small squeak image, right now 
you need about 20MB to run things. Is that too large, you might only 
have say 10mb to play with which will mean you need to trim an image, 
or build one from stable squeak. I *think* memory is very cheap for 
these machines and having more will improve their life span, for 
example I've 48MB in the 7200. with more memory then more things are 
feasible.

I should also point out that use of the jitter 3 VM might make a 
noticeable difference. Also remember these machines will run Linuxppc 
so you could migrate to a unix environment and run the unix version 
of Squeak. You might find the performance is better, and there is an 
emulator to run mac OS 8 & 9 under linux. But I'd think this 
configuration is more work to manage.
-- 
--
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John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
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