I looked over the notes on the status meeting from July 4th. I had previously posted that v10.1 had broken compatibilty with "Old World" macs , and there was a suggestion to restore and/or add compatibilty for "Old World" and "Nubus" based macs. AFAIK( let me know if there are others), the only distros that support the "Old World" macs are: Debian Mandrake(doesn't work from my experience) SLED v9.x(limited PPC support) openSuSE v10.0 NetBSD/PPC(not linux, but....) Yellow Dog v3.0(possibly v4.x, but not officially supported) I had asked before on this list how many are using the "Old World" macs, and didn't get much of a response. :-( As for the "Nubus" based Powermacs, the 6100/7100/8100/9150 are 601 based and the 52xx/53xx/62xx/63xx(excluding the 6360 and 6300/160 - PCI based) are 603/03e based. The 61/71/81/9150 series are upgradable to G3 and G4s, but the others have no known processor upgrade, so I don't really see much point in attempting to add support for these machines(These are also unsupported by NetBSD). The 52/53/62/63xx machines can only make use of up to 64MB RAM anyway. Here's a breakdown of the PCI based "Old World" Macs: 4400/7220 - 603e up to 200Mhz, 1 or 2MB VRAM, 96/160MB RAM Max 5400, 6360, 6300/160, 6400 - 603e up to 200Mhz, 1MB VRAM, Framebuffer based?, 136MB RAM Max 5500 & 6500 - 603e up to 250Mhz, ATI Rage II w/ 2MB VRAM, 128MB RAM Max 7300/7500/7600/8500/8600/9500/9600 - 601/604/604ev to 350Mhz, Framebuffer or PCI based graphics, 1GB to 1.5GB RAM Max 7200 - Hard to upgrade to newer than 601 processor(uses a processor/memory combo on a PCI card) Beige G3 - to 333Mhz G3, ATI Rage based video up to 6MB VRAM, 768MB RAM Max These machines have Open Firmware < 3.0, and require BootX to be run from MacOS <10.0 or NetBSD's "quik" bootloader(which I have never gotten to work). There are G3 and/or G4 upgrades available for these machines of speeds up to 400Mhz(54/64xx), 500Mhz(55/65xx), 800Mhz(Sonnet G4) and 900/1000/1100Mhz(PowerLogix G3). While the bus speeds range from 40Mhz on the 44/54/64xx/7220, 50Mhz on the other 4 digit macs, and 66Mhx on the Beige G3, they can still be very snappy performers especially the ones with the ability to use faster processors and larger memory. The 54/55xx only have 1 PCI slot, the 64/65xx have 2 PCI sots(both have a "Comm Slot" that can accepts a PCI bus Ethernet or Network card), the 86/96xx have 6 PCI slots and the rest have 3 PCI slots. Laptops: There are 7 "Old World" laptops: "NuBus", No Open Firmware: 1400 - 603e to 166Mhz, 64MB RAM Max, G3 Upgradable, Video??? 2300 - 603e to 100Mhz, 56MB RAM Max, Video??? 5300 - 603e to 117Mhz, 64MB RAM Max, Video??? "Old World", PCI Based: 2400 - 603e to 240Mhz, 80MB RAM Max, 1MB VRAM, Upgradeable to G3/400Mhz 3400 - 603e to 240Mhz, 144MB RAM Max, 1MB VRAM 3500(G3/Kanga) - G3/250Mhz, 160MB RAM Max, 2MB VRAM Chips & Technologies 65554 PowerBook G3 Series I & II (Wallstreet & PDQ) - G3 to 300Mhz, 512MB RAM Max, G4 Upgradable, ATI Rage II/Pro 4MB VRAM Based on this, I would recommend the following: That support be continued for these machines: 73xx/76xx/85xx/95xx - 1GB RAM Max, G3/G4 upgradable, 3 PCI slots, PCI graphics upgradable, G3/1Ghz or G4 800Mhz processor upgradable 7500 - Same as 73/76/85/95xx, but a CPU upgrade from the stock 601/100 to a 604/G3/G4 HIGHLY advisable. 86xx/96xx - 1.5GB RAM Max, G3/G4 upgradable, 6 PCI slots, PCI Graphics upgradable, G3/1Ghz or G4 800Mhz processor upgradable Beige G3 - 768MB RAM Max, G4 upgradable, 3 PCI Slots, onboard ATI Rage II w/ 6MB Max VRAM, PCI graphics upgradable, G3 1.1Ghz or G4 1.0Ghz processor upgradable. SCSI - Adaptec or other at least 20MB/s (faster the better), Don't recommend the onboard MESH(5MB/s) or NCR based(10MB/s) due to SLOW speed PCI graphics - ATI Rage 128/16MB or Radeon 7000/32 or 64MB for good X performance. PowerBook G3 Series I & II - 512MB RAM Max, G4 Upgradeable, Low-end for video(should be decent performer w/ 400+Mhz upgrade), 500Mhz G3/G4 processor upgradable. Other than the need for an Open Firmware based graphics card and Disk Controller(the onboard SCSI controllers are 5 & 10Mbps MAX and the Beige G3's IDE controller is 16.7MB/s MAX),most PC based PCI/CardBus cards have worked fine in these systems so long as a kernel module has been compiled for the PPC. If using BootX from an existing Mac OS installation, an OpenFirmware based Disk Controller is not neccessary. Once BootX restarts the system, Linux will detect any PC PCI cards installed whether they have Open Firmware or not. The following should be listed as possible but with limitations(not recommended for X or graphical Setup, useful as a low end server, Require that a Hard drive w/ Swap Parition already on it be present for installation) 4400/7220 - 160MB RAM Max, 2MB VRAM Max, 3 PCI Slots 54xx/6360/ 6300/160 - 136MB RAM Max, Framebuffer Video, 1 PCI Slot 55xx - 128MB RAM Max, 2MB VRAM, 1 PCI Slot 64xx - 136MB RAM Max, Framebuffer Video, 2 PCI Slots 65xx - 128MB RAM Max, 2MB VRAM, 2 PCI Slots 7200 - 1GB RAM Max, 601 on board, PCI Based processor upgrade solution. Upgraded would be slower than the 73/75/76xx machines at same clcok speed. PowerBook2400 - RAMM Max, Framebuffer video(1MB VRAM) 800x600, Not 32bit Cardbus PowerBook 3400 - 144MB RAM Max, Framebuffer video(1MB VRAM) 800x600, Not 32bit cardbus(possibly upgradable) PowerBook 3500/G3 - 160MB RAM Max, C&T Video w/ only 2MB VRAM 800x600 The lower available max memory and need to upgrade the video taking up one of the few(or only) PCI slot(Video upgrade not available for the PowerBooks) in these machines make it harder to upgrade them to openSuSE/PPC's current system requirements. The following should not be supported due to lack of PCI bus, no available processor upgrades and slow speeds, low Max RAM, and lack of Open Firmware: 52xx/53xx/62xx/63xx(excluding the 6360 & 6300/160) PowerBook 23xx/53xx Similar problems with the following even though some have up to 264MB RAM and G3/G4 upgrades available. No Open Firmware and no PCI bus: 61xx/71xx/81xx/9150 PowerBook 1400 BootX was able to boot Linux/PPC and Apple's mkLinux on the NuBus machines, but those distros are no longer maintained. There are some compatible clone machines as well, but most have similer specs to the Apple Based Systems. Example: The Motorola Starmax 3000 uses a similar Motherboard to the 55/65xx based Powermacs, but has a max of 160MB RAM and more available PCI slots. Easier to upgrade the graphics and such, but still not enough RAM. All "Old World" Macs need to have Mac OS v7.x-9.x installed in order to run the BootX program to restart the system(soft-boot) into Linux. This is similar to the old LoadLin setup where you would start DOS to initialize all your devices like sound cards, and the soft-boot into linux so that everything was already runing. For the PowerMacs, this isn't a problem since you would probably want your Linux install on a seperate hard drive connected to a faster PCI IDE or SCSI card. BootX is also required to initialize the G3's "backside" L2 cache. I am willing to put together a step by step guide including links to the BootX program for those interested in using an Old World based Mac. I have been looking into NetBSD's "quik" bootloader, and when/if I figure it out I could post a guide for that. The advantage to quik is that it doesn't require a bootable MAC OS 7.x-9.x setup, but the disadvantage is that it is very difficult to configure due to the need to "fix" a lot of Mac settings and firmware. One problem I have found is that, AFAIK, BootX doesn't enable the "back-side" L2 Cache on the G4s, so quik may be needed for those with a G4 upgrade card. Also, BootX is no longer maintained, but that doesn't seem to be a problem since it works. v10.0's partitioner was reported to be broken, but I found that it worked fine so long as you do not have it try to format an Apple_HFS partition. The main problem with not having a small HFS partition available is copying the updated kernel to the Mac OS drive since BootX needs to have it available there. I also found that I could mount an HFS+ partition, but not do anything with it(You see a message about where all the files went). Since BootX is required, a standard x86 partition map will work with no problems. NetBSD's quik would probably require a partition map created by pdisk like yaboot needs. So, the only bugfix for the partitioner from v10.0 would be to properly format the Apple_HFS partition during boot time. This partition can actually be mounted and used under Linux as long as it is an HFS and not an HFS + and could be mounted as /boot, so that YOU would place the new kernel and inird files there and these files could be seen from MacOS and BootX could be updated accordingly by the user. Or, since MacOS can read to a DOS partition, I see no reason why that wouldn't work either. I will try that the next time I install openSuSE on one of my Macs and report the results(which should be as soon as I get the processor upgrade for my son's PowerBook). I Personally have the following Macs: 5215CD w/ 603/75Mhz Motorola StarMax 4000/160 w/ 604e/160Mhz 7500 w/ G3/400Mhz 9600 w/ 604ev/350Mhz(the "Mach V" processor) 5400/180 w/ 603e/180Mhz 6500/225 w/ 603e/225Mhz Beige G3/266 B&W G3 w/ G4/400Mhz(New World Mac) - v10.2 Alpha 1 doesn't work on it either. G3 Wallstreet w/ 466Mhz G3 I would like to recommend LowEndMac, www.lowendmac.com , as being a VERY valuable resource for information on Macintosh Computers.