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TheBohemian
n00b
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 33
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 Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 2:02 pm Post subject: support PPC PCI cards and other extension |
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Hi fellow PPC/Gentooers,
I recently got an old PowerMac and thought about upgrading that machine with a newer CPU, USB and maybe S-ATA. However is those hardware supported in Linux?
Sonnet's and other hardware manufacturers sites only talk about MacOS compatibility.
How can I find out (preferably before buying  ) whether a certain piece of hardware is supported?
thank you for you answers |
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skunkworx
Guru
Joined: 02 Feb 2003
Posts: 420
Location: Planet Houston
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| Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 3:37 pm Post subject: |
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I run a PowerMac 7300 with an upgraded CPU (G3), and PCI USB and IDE cards (the 7300 did not have built-in IDE, only SCSI). Linux latches onto them all like a charm.
Upgrading the CPU shouldn't be an issue. All of the original CPUs and CPU upgrades available for older PowerMacs fall into the same general category as far as the kernel is concerned: 6xx/7xx/74xx/8260. The G5 is a different animal, but I'm fairly confident there won't be any G5 upgrades for older PowerMacs; it would be about as fruitful as taking a Pentium 4 and trying to cram it into a 386 motherboard.
As for compiling code for the specific CPUs, I have my CFLAGS set up for the G3, and have had no difficulties using those settings.
Regarding the PCI cards, the only issue I have is that DMA has to be set manually for the IDE hard drive, because the speed it defaults to when set automatically is too fast for my 7-year-old system's bus. Other than that, it has been smooth sailing.
As for finding out what hardware works, there is always Google, and also these forums. That's how I decided on which PCI IDE controller to use. When in doubt, you can always ask about a specific piece of hardware. The odds are good that some Mac/linux afficionado has tried it already.
Hope this helps.
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TheBohemian
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Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 33
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| Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2004 9:42 pm Post subject: |
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thanks skunkworx,
this information was pretty helpful for me. I am making my first steps with Apple hardware these days. Although I know PCs very good Macs do have a very different taste, not to mention MacOS. The box I got (a PM 7300 as yours) has MacOS 7.5 installed and thats really odd software 
I just want to know: Whats your Gentoo experience with a G3 (Mhz?, RAM?)? Is it fast enough for compilation of the 'bigger' packages (X11, OOo, Mozilla)? Just for comparison: Another computer at my place has an Athlon TB 1000/512MB which needs 12h for OOo and I think thats ok. |
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skunkworx
Guru
Joined: 02 Feb 2003
Posts: 420
Location: Planet Houston
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| Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2004 5:44 pm Post subject: |
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| TheBohemian wrote: | thanks skunkworx,
this information was pretty helpful for me. I am making my first steps with Apple hardware these days. Although I know PCs very good Macs do have a very different taste, not to mention MacOS. The box I got (a PM 7300 as yours) has MacOS 7.5 installed and thats really odd software
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No command line, one mouse button, one running instance of each application, and one menu bar to rule them all. Keep all that in mind, and MacOS will be easy enough to grasp. If you feel like playing with MacOS some more, 9.1 is the highest the 7300 and all "OldWorld" Macs can go; I'd recommend 8 or higher, but if you don't want to pay for it, I believe 7.6.1 is now free, if you can find a copy. If it isn't, 7.5.5 is definitely free. Rummage around the Apple web site and see what they still offer for downloading.
| TheBohemian wrote: | | I just want to know: Whats your Gentoo experience with a G3 (Mhz?, RAM?)? Is it fast enough for compilation of the 'bigger' packages (X11, OOo, Mozilla)? Just for comparison: Another computer at my place has an Athlon TB 1000/512MB which needs 12h for OOo and I think thats ok. |
The box is running a 400MHz G3 with 384MB RAM (I think; can't connect to it right now). I've never clocked any of my compiles, and I've never compiled OOo, but the initial installation, which included X, took less than a day, and I think the last FireFox compile took about five hours, more or less. Not bad, in my opinion. I run Fluxbox as my window manager, and it behaves itself without any noticeable lag. I'm thinking about bumping it up to KDE, but that's still in the brainstorming stage; I'll have to keep an eye on the resource and disk requirements, especially since the root partition is only 2.5GB. mplayer works fine with older codecs and file formats; DivX AVI's won't play without frame dropping, but I have other computers for that.
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