Sparc Classic as a Web Server

I liked the small size of the Sparc Classic, which is commonly refered to as the "lunchbox". What a great space-saving design many years before todays success of mini barebone and cube PC's. But what would I use the system for?
SUN makes great efforts to ensure their operating system Solaris is backward compatible with older hardware, so I planned to install a late Solaris version and use it as a training system for Shell/Perl scripting and 'C' programming. Of course I expected some difficulties due to the unaltered, 12-year old hardware, but it surprised me to manage installing the latest Solaris 9 OS, running CDE and being able to work almost flawless. It run in fact so well, I thought about extending its

SUN's Sparc Classic as a Web Server or running modern day software on a 10 year old computer
In todays fast-paced society, IT technology has gotten such a short lifespan were systems become obsolete in a year or two, creating a throw-away mentality and endless upgrade cycles at an ever increasing speed. And while I marvel at the latest technology with its possibilities and improvements, I have also grown fond of "the good old times". Could a "ancient" system from the year 1992 still do its job? Could less be even more?	Sparc Classic: 50 MHz MicroSparc processor, 96MB RAM, internal 2GB Harddisk, 2x SBus slots at 20MHz, 10BaseT network, 8bit audio, upgraded cgsix SBus graphics card, Solaris 9 Speed: 59.1 MIPS, 4.6 MFLOPS
While I have been working with servers and workstations from SUN Microsystems for years now, I still remember my fascination for UNIX as a teenager, at a time when UNIX Workstations where state-of-the-art and so unavailable to me. I admired the innovation, solid engineering and their superiority compared to PC's. 2003, when I saw a Sparc Classic for sale, I bought it in a sentimental moment, giving the surprised owner $20 for what he thought was junk.
I liked the small size of the Sparc Classic, which is commonly refered to as the "lunchbox". What a great space-saving design many years before todays success of mini barebone and cube PC's. But what would I use the system for? SUN makes great efforts to ensure their operating system Solaris is backward compatible with older hardware, so I planned to install a late Solaris version and use it as a training system for Shell/Perl scripting and 'C' programming. Of course I expected some difficulties due to the unaltered, 12-year old hardware, but it surprised me to manage installing the latest Solaris 9 OS, running CDE and being able to work almost flawless. It run in fact so well, I thought about extending its	use to be a web server for my homepage and to host the software I wrote. Now, I did say almost flawless, didn't I? Well, here are the challenges I encountered while working with an antique system:
	Modern operating systems are grown huge in size. Graphical user interfaces such as CDE and integrated Internet applications are now spread over several installation CD's or come on a DVD, easily filling up more then a Gigabyte of diskspace after installation. Ancient systems like the Sparc Classic originally came with harddisk sizes as little as 210MB. I got mine with 2GB disk, which had been the only upgrade along with a 8-bit cgsix graphics card during its live. <page 2>