Using A G5 as a mainframe

[slughead]

Is there any way to hookup 2 KB's, 2 mice, 2 monitors, and have 2 users running at once on the same machine like a mainframe?

I've seen this done with an x86 FreeBSD box at my buddy's apartment, it looked like a great idea for a MacinTivo

 

[MacNeXT]

I don't believe this is possible. FreeBSD (and linux) use the X windows system which is a client / server architecture. The client, which is the application and the server, which is the console, don't necessarily have to be on the same computer and altough i've never done this myself, I imagine you can run multiple servers on the same system, each with its own graphics card and keyboard/mouse.

The classic mutli user X windows system uses dedicated X terminals, which are computers with only an X server running on it. Only the clients run on the server in that case.

The Mac OS X GUI doesn't support that. Maybe you can do exactly the same thing with X11 on Mac OS X, but then you would be limited to X apps only, I don't think that is what you're after.

 

[rand()]

I've seen this done with an x86 FreeBSD box at my buddy's apartment, it looked like a great idea for a MacinTivo

Did he actually have both monitors/mice/kbds hooked into the same physical box, or did he have one high-powered 'Mainframe' and one low-powered 'Client?'

If it's the latter, then you could simply have the G5 running where you need the key video performance, but run a VNC Server on it, so that you can VNC into it from *any* (Mac, x86, Sun) box that can run a VNC client. If you have a high-speed network (at least 100Mbps) you can really run full res quite well at that other box.

I haven't really used a lot of VNC, but I *think* this should do what you want - two seperate accounts running at the same time, at two seperate sets of mice-monitor-keyboards.

-rand()

 

[slughead]

Did he actually have both monitors/mice/kbds hooked into the same physical box, or did he have one high-powered 'Mainframe' and one low-powered 'Client?'

If it's the latter, then you could simply have the G5 running where you need the key video performance, but run a VNC Server on it, so that you can VNC into it from *any* (Mac, x86, Sun) box that can run a VNC client. If you have a high-speed network (at least 100Mbps) you can really run full res quite well at that other box.

I haven't really used a lot of VNC, but I *think* this should do what you want - two seperate accounts running at the same time, at two seperate sets of mice-monitor-keyboards.

-rand()

No it was sort of like a mainframe but not really, there was no station, just 2KBs, 2 mice, and 2 monitors hooked up to 1 motherboard.

 

[rainman::|:|]

This isn't possible, i'm afraid. Even if Aqua could handle it (which it may in OS X Server), the machine is not designed to interface with two different keyboards/mice for two different accounts... it would have no idea which mouse/keyboard it was receiving signals from, and would have no way of directing each one to a separate account. So i'm fairly confident it's not possible at all.

paul