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    Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

    Hello everyone,

    I'm new here. I have a PowerBook 3400c (240 MHz, 80 MB ram, 40 GB HDD) that I'm trying to install Kubuntu 5.10 on. (Breezy Badger).

    I have installed OS 9 onto a 5 GB partition, leaving the rest unallocated. I installed Boot X 1.3.1 just fine without a hitch. Basically, I followed all of the steps of the first section of this website: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...n/OldWorldMacs

    The exception to that first set of steps is that I don't have a SCSI hard drive, it's IDE. So, I noticed that my Mac OS installation was on hda9, and the linux was installed onto hda10. I followed all of the steps in the first primary section, referring to the Mac OS partition as hda9, and the linux partition as hda10.

    Installer launced fine, but now I have trouble booting into Linux. I have Boot X configured to launch /dev/hda10. (i've tried with and without video drivers.) Sometimes, when I get to the first set of shell lines, my system just completely powers off. I have to turn it back on. Other times, it goes through the process of loading the kernel ( 2.6.12.9-Power PC ) but towards the end I get errors (which I cannot reproduce right at the moment) that SEEM to indicate an inability to mount hda10.

    If I go back into my Mac OS, I still have my ramdisk.image.gz file in the System folder. If I move this file to the desktop, and then replace it with initrd.gz from the Kubuntu CD rom drive, and rename it ramdisk.image.gz and try booting back into Linux using /dev/hda10 as the mounting point, it basically looks for the installer disc and starts the whole process all over again. My guess is that when you are installing this thing and configuring the boot points, you are actually modifying the ram disk file, is that correct?

    I'm at a loss as to where to go from here. Any advice would be very much appreciated.


    Tomorrow I'll start over again. I'll trash the ram disk file and linux kernel, and re-do the installation from scratch. I suspect that I goobered up these files in the process of installing.

    I'll let you know the results. In the meantime, any advice my way is greatly appreciated.

    #2
    Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

    Well I tried once more, this time using BootX 1.2.2 instead of 1.1.3.

    I now persistently see the first set of shell lines when I try booting Linux, and my system powers down. I am not sure what gives. I seem to have digressed.

    If anyone has ever experienced this, I would really appreciate it.

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      #3
      Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

      Progress! I un-checked "force video drivers" and upped the Ram disk size to 12156k. The hda10 Linux kernel FINALLY booted, and now the installer is finishing as it's supposed to! I'll respond with the results of this.

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        #4
        Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

        I commend your courage and spirit of adventure!

        I'm not sure I would try any KDE desktop system on that hardware, unless perhaps it was something like Slax. I think maybe I would try a new kernel with Xfce or maybe even E-Live with E17. The new 2.6.31 and 2.6.32 kernels are booting a lot faster than the old ones such as in Breezy, and might work faster on that hardware. Another idea might be the Ubuntu netbook remix, if you can stand the look of it -- even though yours is not a netbook, the "lightness" of it might help performance.

        But, you're obviously enjoying the challenge there. Good for you!

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          #5
          Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

          Why in the world are you installing a release from four years ago? I know nothing about macs, but I would imagine that the current version of Kubuntu (which has significantly more and better software than Breezy did) would run on your machine.

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            #6
            Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

            Ummm -- Al, did you catch the spec: 240 MHz, 80 MB ram? :P

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              #7
              Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

              Not to mention PowerPC architecture

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                #8
                Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

                Hummm sound's like a project for this weekend.......................I'll dig out a old aptiva 150Mhz(over clocked to 180) CPU with 80-90MB RAM (4 72 pin SIMM's) desined for win95 when it was new and curentley (I think it hasent ben out the closet in years.) runing win98.

                and see if I can get ANY of the current buntu's to run a GUI ........ on it.

                and then any linux at all with a GUI ...... of course it wuld do a CLI but well see what we see.

                of corse it's not PowerPC architecture but it sounds like fun

                VINNY
                i7 4core HT 8MB L3 2.9GHz
                16GB RAM
                Nvidia GTX 860M 4GB RAM 1152 cuda cores

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                  #9
                  Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

                  my PPC (G3 B&W) hates linux disks... think i broke it when i installed OS X on it... for some reason since i have Openfirmware 3.1.1 it will not boot ne version of yaboot that i have found (btw New world mac)... its a shame cause i used to have ubuntu 5.04 or 5.10 on it. and it ran just fine, after the firmware upgrade (required to install os X). yaboot just laughs at me. guess that mac is going back in the closet w/ my other junk.

                  the slowest machine i have gotten kubuntu 9.10 on is an old hp pavilion , desgned for win95.(think its a p2 celeron @ 400mhz) its very slow. the key part was getting 256mb of ram that kde wanted. both xubuntu and ubuntu would run just fine when i had 192 mb of ram. the kubuntu live disk would hang and never load. (i know the requrements for the live disk is 256 but just wanted to try it ne way).
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                    #10
                    Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

                    Well, I've got a GUI

                    I'm in the kubuntu desktop, but I'm having graphics issues.

                    The X Boot graphics preferences only seem to have any effect on the shell as the kernel is booting.

                    My display is not filling my monitor. There's a bout a 1-inch unused border around the whole thing. And it's only at about 640x480. There's tons of vertical lines, and fuzziness, and most colors are gone, only grey and blue seem to be displayed.

                    I've tried the steps of: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...fm/795356.html

                    Basically, I tried running sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
                    -- I tried configuring with the Chips driver, and with the VGA driver with no luck. I'm afraid to try other drivers listed.....
                    -- My video hardware is a Chips Technologies 65550. I can't know for sure how much video ram it has, it's either 1 or 2 megabytes. According to this guy's XF80Config-4 file, it uses a 119 horizontal refresh rate, and a 196 vertical refresh rate. I've tried both options, no luck.

                    So my primary question is -- take a look at this link: http://fare.livejournal.com/93274.html
                    Look for the long list of somebody's "successful" xf86 config file.
                    1.) Where is this file? I could not find it anywhere on this system.
                    2.) How do I edit, or add this file properly to make it work?

                    Any other ideas on kicking the graphics into gear on this thing?

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                      #11
                      Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

                      That is the file known until recent times as /etc/X11/xorg.conf

                      It can be edited with any text editor, in root mode. Whether those particular values will make your video display better .... I dunno. I guess you'll let us know.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

                        So I did this:

                        Booted to my typical GUI, open Konsole to a root console.
                        -- Type sudo pico /etc/X11/xorg.conf

                        Modified the parameters for the video card (keeping same identified and crap) to:

                        Driver "fbdev"
                        # BusID "PCI:0:17:0"

                        Modified the parameters of the "Screen" section (keeping same identifier and crap) to:

                        DefaultDepth 15
                        SubSection "Display"
                        Depth 1
                        EndSubSection
                        SubSection "Display"
                        Depth 4
                        EndSubSection
                        SubSection "Display"
                        Depth 8
                        Modes "800x600"
                        ViewPort 0 0
                        Virtual 800 600
                        EndSubSection
                        SubSection "Display"
                        Depth 15
                        fbbpp 16
                        Modes "800x600"
                        # ViewPort 0 0
                        # Virtual 800 600
                        EndSubSection
                        SubSection "Display"
                        Depth 16
                        fbbpp 16
                        Modes "800x600"
                        # ViewPort 0 0
                        # Virtual 800 600
                        EndSubSection
                        SubSection "Display"
                        Depth 24
                        Modes "800x600"
                        ViewPort 0 0
                        Virtual 800 600
                        EndSubSection
                        SubSection "Display"
                        Depth 32
                        Modes "800x600"
                        ViewPort 0 0
                        Virtual 800 600
                        EndSubSection
                        EndSection


                        Saved. Rebooted. Golden All graphics working now at full 800x600, 24-bit it seems.

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                          #13
                          Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

                          Wow -- nice work!

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                            #14
                            Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

                            Well like I said, graphics are georgeous. There is a severe performance hit with the improved graphics but that's to be expected I guess.

                            I got the Ethernet working and my lucent wavelan silver PCMCIA wifi card working. Unfortunately I don't have wpa capabilities at the moment. Does kubuntu 5.10 have wpa capabilities? If not, can they be added through a package install or upgrade?

                            At some point I'd like to install firefox but I have no clue where to start after downloading it. I see a program called adept but am clueless about what to do with this.

                            If I could get pointed in the right direction I'd appreciate it.

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                              #15
                              Re: Installing Breezy Badger on PowerBook 3400c

                              adept would be your package manager... you can use it to install and remove programs. check it out you will like it while you in there,see if you can fix your wpa search for "wpa" and see if any packages sound good (wpasupplment i think its called)
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