The Machines

• Sun Ultra10 workstation
• Sony VAIO GRT786M laptop
• Apple Powerbook G4 laptop new!
• Apple Macintosh Classic new!
• Apple Powerbook G3 laptop
• Custom-built (by me!) Pentium III server
• Apple Macintosh Classic
• Apple Macintosh LCIII
• (another) Apple Macintosh Classic new!
• Apple Macintosh SEnew!

The Set-up

The network is really two separate networks, a Windows active directory domain run by the Windows 2K box and a separate AppleTalk network.

Needless to say the two Apple Powerbooks can happily play on any network, while the classic Macs (which, lest we forget, are over a decade and a half old ) can't handle a Win2K network/domain properly but can access simple network services e.g. email, http, limited ftp.

The Intel boxes have trouble with everything apart from VNC and telnet on the non-Windows side of things but to be fair XP is a lot better than 2000 at these sorts of tasks.

The windows network is schematically described in the diagram below. Click here for a photo of part of it.

Update

(Too busy to update the diagram...).

I now have a very lovely Orange SPV M5000 as my main phone/PDA so I have another requirement to have a Windoze box in the house (see below).

The VAIO laptop now runs only Windows Server 2003.

 

The Point?
The network just evolved as I gathered machines during the course of my life as a spod. At various points I required the functionality afforded by various bits software and have largely acquired hardware on the basis that it could run the thing I needed. The reason I have a diverse combination of machines (Apple, Intel, Sun) is because my personal requirements have also evolved. And latterly, working for The Man as I do, my needs have encompassed Micros**t products because most larger organisations have them foist on them because of <a href="#">market forces</a> so I have to have one of their servers

General IT Requirements 1980 to Present Day

• Gaming/Messing Around (1980 onwards)
• DTP & Graphic Design (1990 onwards)
• Database & HyperCard™ development (1992 onwards)
• Web design & development (1995 onwards)
• Java development (1999 onwards)
• Relational Database design & development (1999 onwards)
• Windows NT/2000 for software development (2000 onwards)
• Solaris9 for software development and as a personal operating environment (2000 onwards)
• OS X for just about everything (2005 onwards)

As becomes apparent from even a cursory glance at the chart, pure techno-lust has also underpinned the need for some of this kit. This was never more the case than with my recent acquisition of a G4 Powerbook, which I bought because I wanted a Linux/Unix (*nix) portable following the early demise of the poorly manufactured screen in a £1900 Sony VAIO. I was running Redhat 7.2 and XP Pro on the VAIO and was quite happy with it till the display packed up (after a mere 13months of service)...

But OS X (Tiger) is fantastic. It's like an operating system from a sci-fi film actually on your desk. The similarities between Tiger and the OS used by the cops in the very ridiculous ‘Minority Report’, are startling. If you haven't already done so, you must check out the latest gizmos at the apple website.
I've experienced some of these feelings of joy and mania before, notably when I got the G3 Powerbook with OS 9.1 back in '98, but back then whilst the machine was great for all the usual appley things like graphics, office applications, ease of use etc., it couldn't really handle the internet, email, ftp or the worlds of Windows or *nix. And it didn't have USB or FireWire so I was totally screwed by '99...

But this hasn't been the case at all with G4/OS X - within one minute of plugging in to the power I was doing stuff on the Powerbook. It started playing 'Eple' (Royksopp) at me and after completing a short series of wizards and forms, me and machine were pretty much working as one; and not just trivial 'Office'-type tasks. With the laptop I can wirelessly do development work on virtually any modern platform with the aid of VNC. Common tools like DreamWeaver, Flash, Entourage (nee Outlook) are light years ahead on OS X and of course all Java applications (and of course virtually anthing that runs on *nix) work beautifully on OS X too. Its great!

Some Screenshots

The Powerbook G4 supports multiple monitors so the Mac desktop can be extended across two displays to provide acres of what American people call '[screen] real estate'. This is in addition to desktop manager software which allows a dozen virtual Mac desktops as well. So one could, for example, have VNC'd desktops from a number of OSes on one monitor and a standard Mac desktop onthe main display. Menubars and the doc can of course be moved to whereever the user bloody well pleases without screwing up the way virtually every single bit of application software runs (c.f. Windows XP 'Start Bar').