[conspire] (forw) Re: PowerPC Linux Install This Saturday?

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 11:43:15 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: "M. C." <hermannhessefan at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: PowerPC Linux Install This Saturday?
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting M. C. (hermannhessefan at yahoo.com):

> Hey Rick, thanks so much for your quick reply! I'll bring the computer
> by this weekend. I thought I read during my Googling that G4 PowerPCs
> won't boot from USB, but that quote from CentosPrime certainly sounds
> promising.

If it'll boot from _either_ USB or Firewire, we're fine.  Your machine
has, don't forget, two Firewire 400 ports in addition to those three USB
1.1 ports.  (There are five USB ports total on your machine's
motherboard.  Three are externally accessible.)   In my experience, all
Mac models with roughly the same vintage of BIOS ROMs can do the same
booting tricks.  The ROMs just aren't customised much, if at all, for
each model.

Here's a page you'll probably want to have bookmarked:
http://lowendmac.com/imacs/15in-imac-g4-700-800-mhz.html

By the way, you might want to telephone AllMac and see if the price of
replacing that dodgy optical drive is justifiable.  _Or_ you might adopt
my tactic of just having an all-purpose optical drive in an external
enclosure.  I had AllMac replace both the failing hard drive and the
already failed SuperDrive in my Intel iBook, and they do good work
though of course with older computers you always have to decide if it's
worth it.

For completeness's sake, I should mention an item in CABAL's bestiary:

NetBSD 5.0.2 (2010-02-06) for macppc 

Nobody's wanted to install NetBSD at CABAL in a long time, and so I
haven't bothered to burn the above to media, but it's occasionally
really handy for some of the more exotic CPU architectures, and some
people simply prefer BSD.  CABAL can help them, too.

-- 
Rick Moen             "'Horrible tragedy':  Use this phrasing to differentiate 
rick at linuxmafia.com   the described event from hilarious tragedies."
McQ!  (4x80)                                              -- FakeAPStylebook 

----- End forwarded message -----