On Jun 23, 2006, at 22:11, Chris Tribo wrote:

>
> On Jun 23, 2006, at 3:30 PM, Brian Durant wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am a total newbie that would like to install BSD on my Apple G3  
>> PDQ. I have looked at the archives and at the supported hardware  
>> list. It seems like it should be possible, but it would be great  
>> if someone could post some links on installing BSD and how to  
>> tackle the OpenFirmware. I noticed that it may (??) be possible to  
>> boot a BSD install CD and install without having to use BootX,  
>> which would be great as I would like to be able to run my PDQ as a  
>> desktop that only has BSD on it.
>
> Not only is it possible to run without BootX, it's required if you  
> want to use sysinst.
>
> Frankly though, having run one of these machines myself, there is  
> little reason to run NetBSD on it.
>
> - Brightness control doesn't work right
> - No power management
> - No hot swap support for drives
> - onboard ethernet is slow even for 10baseT
> - no accelerated Xserver if you can get the Rage Pro to work at  
> all. (It wasn't working as of 3.0, the xserver was missing, leaving  
> only Xmacppc 8 bit 256 color non accelerated video)
> - No sleep or standby support
> - Cardbus slots don't work (PCMCIA does last time I tried)
> - No support for Rage Pro LT in machfb, so no accelerated console,  
> color support, or virtual terminals
> - No sound playback even from an audio cd and driver is unstable
> - IDE controller is slow
> - SCSI controller driver is unstable
> - No PMU support so you can close the lid and the cpu is still  
> running full speed and it will damage the screen if left that way.

Wow, so the situation is even worse than with Linux? I don't really  
get what the problem is. The argument always seems to be based on the  
fact that there is such a plethora of different combinations and  
makes of hardware (cards, motherboards, etc.), but on the PPC  
platform, Apple has always maintained such a strict control on the  
hardware. The only time when this policy changed was during the clone  
period.

I haven't been able to get Linux working on either my recently  
purchased G3 PDQ or my G5 single (PowerMac 9.1) - except for Fedora  
Core PPC 5 (no sound). I would have thought that the BSDs being more  
closely related to OS X, the situation would be less problematic.  
Apple (claims at least, it) is supporting the Open Source community  
and I assumed that would include opening up for Open Source drivers  
for Apple gardware.

What are the alternatives for the G3 PDQ? Is it possible to strip  
down Jaguar (OS X 10.2.8) so that it only runs opgradable X Window  
apps? Many OS X apps have passed the cut off OS (Jaguar) for the PDQ.  
I know that a modified BootX exists that allows installation of  
Tiger, but I really just got the PDQ to run a Linux or BSD system on.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Brian