No Problem...
There are more details you should be aware of, however before you thank
me. The saying in Engineering, and perhaps other careers goes "the
devil is in the details", so get prepared to not be happy. And for
that, I will apologize ahead of time.
The PB 3400 came with a 603 chip which is a PowerPC chip. If you are
running OS X Tiger on a 603, that IS pretty amazing. But some programs
in Tiger will be looking for specific features which only PowerPC G4/G5
series have. Why? Because the design of that series is several
magnitudes of order beyond the 603. Even the PowerPC G3, which is more
advanced than the 603 is not the recommended chip for running or
showing off OS X!
The 603 should have no trouble running Champion Server 1, and YDL 2 or
YDL 3. However, you should be staying with Mac OS 8.6 which came with
your PB, because you probably have everything 8.6 would need (back up
software, diagnostic software etc.) but again to use YDL you need BootX
to be running within Mac OS 8.6 PB unlike their desktop and tower
cousins are not designed to be all that flexible. You cannot easily
swap out motherboard, cpu, memory, graphic card, etc of a PB, as easily
as you could a desktop or tower system. This limitation is also true
for the PC Intel based universe.
So keeping OS 8.6 is a great idea (moving up to OS 9 is not much of an
improvement) and still you need BootX to get into Linux regardless.
But you can upgrade from YDL 2 to YDL 3 or to YDL 3.x whatever it was,
but again what is possible for you with a PB 3400 stops there.
Burning isos or anything else, cannot be done with the standard CD-ROM
drive which came with the PB 3400. You may perhaps have an external
DVD-RW/CD-RW drive which can burn isos or anything else, but I doubt
very much whether the circuitry or Mac OS 8.6 of the PB 3400 can handle
it well, if at all. I recommend that you speak with the wonderful
wizards of Other World Computinng (www.fastermacs.com) if something can
be done to get modern functionality out of what you have those are the
folks to communicate with. They don't support Linux however, although
anything I've gotten from them has always worked within YDL. Right now
your problem is to get the OS to burn your isos; they may have
software which works with 8.6. Talk with them, write them an email.
Although I respect your enthusiasm regarding the PowerPC I will state
that Apple's decision is forcing a whole lot of thinking for many
people. First of all your experience with the PowerPC is colored by
the OS which Apple produced for you and the rest of us. However, that
OS will no longer be available for PowerPC based systems. The OS
systems which remain with the PowerPC will be YDL, IBM's AIX and maybe
something produced by Genesi or Pegasos. This means the type of
persons still sticking it out with the PowerPC will most likely be
mathematicians, engineers, and other professionals who are not
unwilling to investigate pages of code in hexadecimal. Linux as an
alternative to Windows or the Mac OS is not the way to go for the
majority of people, because the majority of users cannot code in C or
C++. And like it or not, solid programming skill is what is needed to
function even reasonably well in Linux just to get a normal task done.
It shouldn't be that hard, but it is. And without the Mac OS to fall
back on you'll just have Linux on a PowerPC and your own skill or lack
of it. The Mac OS will be departing for Intel real soon now, and I
don't think Apple is looking back at those who will continue to work on
PowerPC G4s/G5s.
You will not be the only person puzzled with what is going on, but you
may be so used to Apple's OS you may just have to follow them
where-ever they go. Linux as an OS is not pretty, cuddly or warm. It
is however, powerful, complete and uncompromising. It is and has
become unique in a completely new way which will make many, many people
very uncomfortable. It is as bad and different as Grad School can get
when all the Science and Engineering students gawk and laugh at
everyone else, it will get that way soon and worse. Maybe not on this
list, but you may see it already here and there. Also one more thing,
IBM is not Apple. IBM's idea of an explanation of a task for eating a
sandwich would be found in Vol. 12, Section a, sentence 12; Apple
explains nearly everything as though they were your buddy. A lot of
people won't like that difference either, but IBM produces the chips so
... it's every fellow for himself!
Welcome to the new reality.
_______________________________________________
yellowdog-newbie mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/mailman/listinfo/yellowdog-newbie
