Chris Tillman wrote: > On Sat, Apr 13, 2002 at 09:27:48AM +0100, Sacred Eagle wrote: > > Hello all! > > I just received an old Mac PowerBook 520c and I wonder if it is at all > > possible to install Debian on it? > > It doesn't have a CD device so have to make a floppy install. I've > > downloaded all the Debian (Potato) images (floppy) for PowerPC but I want > > to know if there is someone here who has done this before.Any > > advice/warnings before I make a go for it? > > According to my ancient Apple Spec chart, the 520c is a 68LC040 with a > maximum of 36MB memory and a 240MB or 320MB hard disk (does that take > you back or what? -- you could pay extra for an optional 80MB extra!). > > Anyway, potato would be a better choice for this machine, woody may be > too memory and disk intensive. But you need the m68k images, not > powerpc. You will need to leave MacOS on the machine, because m68k > can't boot on its own; so that means your hard drive will need to be > shared between a minimal MacOS and a minimal Linux. You'll need at > least 100MB for Linux, that's probably not enough for an X server > though. > > I'm forwarding to debian-68k to see if anyone else has comments.
Because of the forwarding I cannot find the mail-address of the original author (Sacred Eagle), so I'm forwarding this to debian-powerpc too in the hope that he'll receive it. Congrats with the machine. There are a few hurdles to overcome with Powerbooks in general: 1) The ADB (Apple Desktop Bus for keyboard and mouse) type of Powerbooks will only work with 2.4.x kernels. Get yours from linux-m68k.sourceforge.net. 2) Linux/m68k has troubles with most 68LC040 processors Apple bought from Motorola because there's a bug in the CPU which prevents floating-point emulation from working. There have been some people on the linux-mac68k mailing list who wanted to recompile the complete potato base system with --msoft-float (?). I think one was called Matthew Eis. Please ask at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 3) Because debian potato and woody only have 2.2 kernels you'll maybe need to take a few extra steps. One I'm certain is manually installing 2.4 modules. Don't know of any other. Please don't be discouraged: the kernel-hackers and others at [EMAIL PROTECTED] would really love to hear how everything comes along. Hope this helps, Erik -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik C.J. Laan elaan at dds.nl --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
