[K12OSN] PowerMac G3 All in Ones

[Shane Sammons]

Thanks Jim, I found good instruction from NetBSD on those AIO G3's. It talks
about how the firmware needs to be upgraded and a file placed in it or
instructions given to it...haven't processed it all yet. I am going to give
that a try on Monday. I think some of the ones we have MAY have come with
100MB, I will have to check into that. If they are 10Mb yeah that just might
make it a bit too slow as i used a 10T hub to test thing to start and it was
pretty slow.

If anyone is interested
http://www.netbsd.org/docs/network/netboot/intro.macppc.html was the link
for diskless NetBSD booting I was referring too. The kind folks in #ltsp on
irc.freenode.net gave me that link.

On 7/13/07, Jim Kronebusch <jim at winonacotter.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:18:22 -0400, Shane Sammons wrote
> > Has anyone used the older PowerMac G3's that are encased in an all in
> one
> > unit as Thin Clients? I searched the Wiki to no avail. I believe it can
> > network boot. However, I had no luck in doing so. I have only been able
> to
> > get GX1's booting from my test server.
> >
> > Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am trying to push this project
> > forward to make a Library free of OS X systems we could use elsewhere to
> > make an entire second lab.
> >
> > Thanks for any help
> > --Shane
>
> I was able to boot some 5500's via instructions I received from Chuck
> Liebow a few years
> back.  I wasn't happy enough with the performance from them.  I think the
> same stuff
> could be used with G3 all-in-one's but if I remember right there was
> trouble getting a
> NIC that would work.  The built in NIC is 10MB which isn't really
> sufficient, and there
> was only one or two add in NIC's that would work.  Here is a website that
> describes
> configuring the nubus macs to work (ie 5500's)
> http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/support/solutions/champion_server/LTSP/
> I really don't remember the particulars but I think the problem was
> definitely the NIC.
>
> What may be an easier solution is to find an old version of Yellow Dog
> Linux that would
> load on these machines with a minimal install and configure to do an X
> -query
> 192.168.1.254 or something on startup.  This might be the easiest way to
> get all of the
> hardware recognized (along with a 100MB add-in nic which would be crucial
> for good
> performance) yet still be able to connect to the ltsp server.  With a
> 100MB nic those
> machines should be great clients as they are the same specs as a Bondi
> iMac.
>
> If you can't get this to work, if you have any Bondi Blue iMacs (they
> actually look like
> a crappy green) laying around these would be your best option as they have
> a new enough
> firmware to support network booting and you can hardcode the firmware to
> boot right to
> ltsp without any user interaction or local software.
>
> Good luck.
>
>
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