Subject: Re: MOL on a G3: Need to buy MacOS upgrade?
From: Timothy A. Seufert (tas@mindspring.com)
Date: Sat Apr 01 2000 - 02:01:05 MST
At 12:02 PM +0200 3/31/00, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
>I've been regularly trying to run MOL during the past year; it always
> failed. My machine is a beige G3, MacOS 8.1 (Dutch).
>
>Now I find this quote (http://www.maconlinux.org/rom.html)
>
> Boot ROMs from other computers might work too (please
> report success or failure!). ROMs from G3, iMac, iBook and
> PowerBoook do NOT work. This is really not an issue since it
> is possible to use a NewWorld ROM instead (recommended on
> ALL machines).
>
>But NewWorld ROM's are only available as of MacOS 8.6, no?
Correct.
In my experience, MOL is really simple to set up on a G3 if you have
8.6 or 9.0, and a recent kernel that supports the runtime patching.
You just install the RPM and follow the instructions on the web page,
and it works.
I never got it to work prior to the New World support.
>Does this mean I must buy a new version of MacOS? I'm very
>much reluctant to do so. What's more: Apple's technotes don't
>even mention MacOS > 8.1 (eg 8.6.x) to be supported on my machine.
>
>What am I missing?
http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n60200
You didn't think Apple would abandon the beige G3 THAT quickly, did you? :)
8.6 (and, I believe, 9.0 as well) supports any PowerPC Mac which
Apple originally shipped with a PowerPC CPU. (PPC upgrades for 68K
Macs are out.)
The one warning on that page about potential incompatability with 3rd
party processor upgrades for PPC Macs is mainly Apple covering itself
from supporting something it doesn't want to. Apple doesn't include
anything but its own products in the MacOS QA testing matrix, so they
want to be explicit that with somebody else's CPU card you're on your
own.
In reality the only types of upgrades which could have a
compatability problem with 8.6 or 9.0 are upgrades for NuBus
PowerMacs and several low-end 603e models which have to be upgraded
via their L2 cache slots. These machines weren't designed to be
ugpraded, and the solutions that have been invented usually involve
some funky glue logic to make it all work, plus a gob of software
band-aids.
Tim Seufert
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