Cheap low end PowerMacs

Post #73,908 by orion 1/10/03 12:49:55 PM Reply	Cheap low end PowerMacs [link\|http://www.pcliquidator.com/displayProduct.asp?which=48\|7200 and 7500 PowerMacs, less than $60USD] with just a 601 PowerPC processor, but good enough for a low end Mac on a budget. Just add in an OS, a keyboard and mouse, and a monitor. For $4USD they have a Mac to VGA adapter so you could use an old VGA monitor on your Mac. I would guess that they could run [link\|http://www.linuxiso.org/finddistro.php\|PPC Linux] instead of just MacOS. If you have a bunch of old Mac software you want your kids to use on a second Mac, it might be worth it to buy one of these things. But you need an old copy of MacOS to run those. I doubt these will run OSX, but at least up to MacOS 9.X, right? **Pete Moss' Peat Moss, when only the finest horsesht will do! ;)***
Post #73,914 by bepatient 1/10/03 1:19:46 PM Reply	Pretty sure those only run mklinux. You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #73,930 by orion 1/10/03 3:37:03 PM Reply	How sure? Because I may get one sometime just to see how it works if I can get a VGA monitor to work with it and get an ADB mouse and keyboard. I wanted to download Yellowdog Linux or something to work with it. Maybe upgrade the SCSI drive later and add in more 5 Volt DIMM chips. **Pete Moss' Peat Moss, when only the finest horsesht will do! ;)***
Post #73,980 by tjsinclair 1/10/03 7:42:26 PM Reply	Depends on if it uses NuBus If NuBus, then MkLinux is about the only thing that will run on it, as far as I know. (Don't have my handy-dandy Mac model guide with me at the moment.) Tom Sinclair "Everybody is someone else's weirdo." - E. Dijkstra
Post #74,022 by orion 1/10/03 10:43:49 PM Reply	It uses PCI according to the description So then would YellowDog Linux work on it? No NuBus, but at least I hard of someone using OpenBSD on a Mac SE/30 before, or maybe it was NetBSD or FreeBSD? **Pete Moss' Peat Moss, when only the finest horsesht will do! ;)***
Post #75,353 by rickmoen 1/18/03 5:41:51 AM Reply	Re: Depends on if it uses NuBus tjsinclair wrote: If NuBus, then MkLinux is about the only thing that will run on it, as far as I know. Or [link\|http://nubus-pmac.sourceforge.net/\|maybe not]. Rick Moen rick@linuxmafia.com If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.
Post #75,364 by tjsinclair 1/18/03 9:44:30 AM Reply	I sit corrected Tom Sinclair "Everybody is someone else's weirdo." - E. Dijkstra
Post #74,014 by bepatient 1/10/03 9:59:54 PM Reply	Hmm... ...seems like one more has come out since I debated bringing a 7200 in house... [link\|http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~tesch/linux_info/\|Monolithic Linux] Though the name leaves me a bit...cool. You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #75,352 by rickmoen 1/18/03 5:35:14 AM Reply	Re: Hmm... bepatient wrote: Hmm... seems like one more has come out since I debated bringing a 7200 in house: Monolithic Linux The referenced Web page is not about any PowerPC Linux distribution by that name, but rather about the concept of running on PowerMacs the monolithic kernel ported to PPC by my friend Paul Mackerras, instead of the mkLinux kernel. That page is old and a bit out of date: Among other things, its uses the obsolescent term "linux-pmac" (meaning the monolithic kernel version), and the list of distributions near the end is way out of date. Where they say "Linux/PowerPC", that's an antique name for the LinuxPPC distribution, which is now defunct. I have a more-current distributions list here: [link\|http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#powermaclinux\|http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#powermaclinux] By the way, I have Yellow Dog Linux 2.2 running on a 7200. (v. 2.3 is available.) It'll never be a speed demon, but it works. Rick Moen rick@linuxmafia.com If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.
Post #75,432 by bepatient 1/18/03 4:48:50 PM Reply	Cool...thanks. I may end up with one of these machines one day. You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! _{Laurie Anderson} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #75,486 by rickmoen 1/19/03 3:21:28 AM Reply	Re: Cool...thanks. BePatient wrote: I may end up with one of these machines one day. Yr. welcome. By coincidence, a friend brought over a 7200 of his own, today. We started by putting Debian-stable ("woody"/3.0) on it, and then upgrading it to Debian-testing ("sarge"). The motherboard's built-in video chipset is pretty abysmal: FYI, it's a "Platinum" chipset, which came from the factory with either 1MB (most often) or 2MB VRAM, upgradeable to 4MB. We were able to get 800x600 at 16bpp. Use the framebuffer video driver. If you can justify the expense, adding a video card (e.g. ATI) would be a major win. The ADB keyboard and mouse get addressed as USB devices(!). The SCSI chipset is Advansys. Ethernet is the old MACE chipset. Don't expect much. These puppies were mostly 90 MHz PPC 601 chips, and I believe some early ones were 75 MHz. My friend's has 96MB system RAM, which is enough to get by: We put Window Maker, Blackbox, Sawfish, and Icewm on it, with Window Maker as the default. Rick Moen rick@linuxmafia.com If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

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