SE30s and IIX machines- Packet monitors and Home Automation

I suppose SE30s and Mac IIs are 11 years old now! Yow. I still think of antique computers as 8-bit micros- that's just my own deluded sense of history. I bought an SE30 w/ Ethernet recently for $80 through the net. The owner showed up at my office one day recently and delivered it. The next week I also bought a Mac IIx w/ 8 megs of RAM for $25 at a Silicon Valley swap meet. A friend gave me a couple of Asante SCSI <-> Ethernet adapters which can normally be had for around $20 on eBay. I hadn't figured out much useful to do with these slower machines until... I found a very nice TCP/IP, etc packet monitor that runs on these machines. The "trial" version of this product (EtherPeek) is pretty hot in itself and is worth checking out. The full version is... unfortunately $700. I wish they'd sell the demo version with the 30-day time-bomb turned off for $100 as it's already more than what I need to monitor my cable-modem connection. Oddly... the Win32 version of EtherPeek is just so-so... I should add that in the case of SE30s, these things can sit on your desk, won't get knocked off like a laptop and are available for less than $100 with an ethernet card. This is an ideal niche machine for a packet monitor! http://www.aggroup.com - you have to download the app and then wait for the password to be e-mailed to you. ---- There was an article in the May issue of Popular Home Automation which piqued my interest in acquring these machines originally. It was entitled, "What I Did With The Mac in the Closet" and features a very vancy Macintosh/BSR controller system. This system can talk to wireless speakers in every room in the house. After taking the magazine home from the store where I found it, I realized this would be a social faux-pas in my house and decided to nix the idea. The software application that drives it is "XTension" by San Hill Engineering. It might still be fun to play with since the application is scriptable and can handle motion detectors and such. The application looks pretty nice. I wonder if the motion detectors would detect the squirrels I hear are supposed to gather from time to time in my detached garage. Hmm... The only other application I tho't of for the older Macs is as a dedicated Quick-cam machine. I must admit I use them for scanning in pictures occasionally - waiting for the images to be converted to JPEG is a hassle tho'. Thomas