multibooting ppc with Mac OS 9 & X on an ancient iBook

[Craig White]

On Thu, 2008-08-28 at 11:00 +0900, Joel Rees wrote:
> On Aug 26, 2008, at 12:12 PM, Craig White wrote:
>
> > this may be useful (apparently you can't use fdisk on an Apple system)
> > # parted -l
> > Model: Maxtor 6Y080L0 (ide)
> > Disk /dev/hda: 82.0GB
> > Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
> > Partition Table: mac
> >
> > Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name      Flags
> >  1      512B    32.8kB  32.3kB               Apple
> >  2      32.8kB  1081kB  1049kB  hfs          untitled  boot
> >  3      1081kB  106MB   105MB   ext3         untitled
> >  4      106MB   641MB   535MB   linux-swap   swap      swap
> >  5      641MB   82.0GB  81.3GB  ext3         untitled
> >
> > obviously the yaboot partition is #2
> 
> That's a 100G drive?
----
parted says that it's an 82G drive
----
> > OOo has a terrific set of tools for document creation...I think it  
> > puts
> > Appleworks to shame.
> 
> Different strokes for different folks. OOo feels clumsy to me. Feels  
> too much like MSOffice.
----
totally intentional - It allows people to leverage what they already
know rather than scuffling through a completely different interface.
----
> That may be in part because I've been burned by MSOffice so many  
> times that even the slightest whiff of MS turns my stomach.
> 
> But what I'm using that is indispensable to me right now is a little  
> feature where you can bury a spreadsheet in a "draw" document, show  
> small windows on the printable page, and use the sort function with  
> random keys to randomize the words in the printed list. Kind of a  
> slick way to make word bingo cards, among other things. And I'm doing  
> a lot of less program-like stuff with the drawing software, too.
> 
> That SVG editor (inkscape?) that was in the news recently may help a  
> lot for when I need to do drawings.
> 
> Thinking about this, I suppose I should be able to build something  
> similar with hidden worksheets in the MSOffice-centric way of  
> thinking. Maybe I'll try that with OOo sometime. (I do use it on  
> other, more powerful hardware. And I have to admit, I should not be  
> surprised if the AppleWorks version might turn out to be less  
> intuitive to my fellow teachers who might want to use the teaching  
> materials I'm creating than an MSExcel "workbook" or whatever that  
> would be called. Also, I've thought, several times, that I might be  
> able to get even better effects by programing a plugin for OOo, just  
> haven't had the time and luck to figure out how to get a handle on  
> that yet.)
----
you really should be using scribus - desktop publishing because you can
put all sorts of different elements (text/graphics) anywhere on the
page.
----
> I think you mean EFI, which is iNTEL's take on openfirmware?
----
indeed
----
> > you probably got the best I had to offer - I actually made a clean
> > install of OS 9.1 that I then made into a dmg file with 'Disk Utility'
> > so I could just dump a full OS 9 setup onto any computer running  
> > OSX so
> > it would work in Classic Mode or reboot to OS 9 if I chose it in
> > 'Startup Disk' (it's just under 300 mb).
> 
> That might also work, but the games aren't the only things. An old  
> Metrowerks compiler/IDE, for example, easily consumes 1G, and I'm not  
> anxious to put that on an image file on this 300MHz iBook. Don't know  
> how much longer I'll need it, but I still need it for a little while.
----
the dmg file is a time saver meaning that I didn't have to struggle
through creating an OS 9 setup once I had the image, I could mount the
image and just copy over the 'System Folder', 'Applications (Mac OS 9)'
folders and I was pretty much set.
----
> 
> Actually, there are a number of ways I can free up partitions, once I  
> get some old cruft cleared away in the dd-ed copy of the previous  
> boot partition, but that's really not on-topic here.
> 
> I filed a bug report on the part of this where gparted won't make a  
> small enough partition on my disk and anaconda won't use the  
> partitions I can make -- bugzilla #460390
> 
> Thanks for trading ideas.
> 
> Hopefully, I can either get the time to get openBSD set up with X11  
> and the Gimp and OOo or I can find out enough to get it to boot  
> ofboot and yaboot from my Mac OS 9 partition in the next few months.
> 
> Really want to see how heavy OOo is in Linux on this box. The  
> NeoOffice fork of OOo was too heavy on Mac OS X 10.2 with 192M of  
> RAM. If I want to try that again, or if I want to try the new OOo for  
> X11 on the Mac, I'll have to upgrade the iBook to 10.3, and I'm not  
> anxious to spend the money and time on that. I'd rather just get a  
> new notebook that can handle it OOo better under Linux. Some of these  
> webbooks look really nice, and especially handy for when I want to do  
> some work on the train.
> 
> More rambling than useful information here, hopefully not too much  
> noise.
----
Neo-Office has been a performance pig on every installation I have seen
- such a pig that it is unusable...period...at least OOo is usable but
you are correct that on Mac OSX 10.2, there are few options.

With only 192 mb RAM, I would probably investigate whether I could get
XFCE running on ppc just to liven it up. 

good luck

Craig