So we needed a dev box in our new office and i volunteered to be the pig to dig an old box out of a closet (an 8500 with a g3 card), get linux on it and make it run. Of course, in the process, it is now my workstation in our new office.
Interstingly, while ydlinstalls neatly and quickly, there were some problems.
First of all the XF86config was really fizucked. Gettin the monitor to display anything other than 600x480 was damn near impossible, execpt if it was inverted purlple. I looked at the ydl list serves, but no joy. Finally, thanks to google, i can across this gem: http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2001/debian-powerpc-200111/
msg00400.html and discovered that actually NOT telling the kernel what to do was better and infact, since this is an oldworld machine (ie: no open firmware) if i boot to macos9 first and let the monitor options get set THERE, it actually retains them booting linux. go figure. i guess this is the product of running really old hardware.
Well actually, this isn't really old hardware. This machine replaced my duo2300 some five years ago (yes, i was behind the times even then) and was my desktop untill 2001 i think. Bearing in mind that each cpu takes something on the order of 1 tonne of material (mostly water) to produce, seems a shame to not put to good use. and so it is. it sits at my feet puring and i'm now back to enjoying linux on a daily basis again.
Anorther annoying thing is that gcc did not install by default. I think i just selected the desktop install which does not seem to be complete. and yum and apt-get just aren't working at the moment. well see how long this lasts.
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