MacIIcx as a masquerading gateway?
Hi all!
Could someone please enlighten me whether it's possible to realize my dream of
having MacIIcx with 2 Ethernet cards working as a masquerading gateway? (with
Debian GNU/Linux running on it, of course ;-) I believe there are two main
obstructions for this.
The first one is to really have an embedded system. That means I want to
switch it on and in, say, 3 minutes have it up and running without any
additional interference (even without having to switch the monitor on). After
browsing all the documentation I've found for several hours I suspect the
answer is negative :-( I still don't completely believe in such a bad luck and
decided to ask this question precisely. This list looks like a perfect place
for it (sorry if it's not the case). The problem, as I understand it, is that
one must first boot MacOS, then run Penguin loader and only then can enjoy the
Power of Linux(tm). Well, I can live with MacOS, but is it possible to make
Penguin starting automagically? I'm sorry for this naive question but I've
never had any working experience with Mac, so I simply don't know. Will it
boot without a monitor (or with a switched off monitor)?
The other problem may appear only if the first one is solvable. Right now that
Mac has a single new HD (well, not really new, but new for this Mac) without
any OS on it. How to install something there? I've read that Macs can't boot
from floppies and CDs. What are the other options? I've also read that Debian
can be installed on a m68k computer through TFTP, but it's not written which
architectures indeed support this option. Did Macs ever hear about that? What
people are doing if MacOS is crashed and one need to reinstall it? (is it
never happening? ;-) Also I can find some .sea.bin and .smi.bin files on
mirror.apple.com host which presumably contain MacOS 7.0.x, but what should I
do with them? I guess one first has to have some other copy of MacOS running
to be able to take profit of them. I can (with some troubles) put that HD in
an external SCSI box and connect to another Mac, but what next?
I know these questions sound stupid, but I really have troubles even to switch
those Macs off, let alone installing something on them ;-) Although I've been
a happy Debian user for almost 4 years and have it now running on both Sparc
and PC at home. It'll be fun to add Mac to that collection, won't it? ;-)
Thanks in advance for any help or comments!
--- Alexander.
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