Yellow Dog on Macintosh 8200/120 System

[Suzanne Payne]

--On Thursday, March 13, 2003 9:25 am +0000 Huw Pearce 
<Huw.Pearce@bcs.org.uk> wrote:

> I have acquired a Macintosh, the outside of the box says its an 8200/120
> and I have managed to discover the following
>
> 16Mbytes RAM
> 2Gbyte hard disc
> CD-OM drive
> Floppy disc drive
> a version of MacOS installed but I do not know how to determine what
> revision.
>
> My question to this group is
>
> Can I replace MacOS with Yellow Dog Linux on this system?  I have some
> 2Gbyte SCSI discs which could be used if they can be installed in the
> case. I realise that I will probably have to increase the amount of RAM.

To determine the OS release, once it has loaded, go to the Apple in the top 
left corner and come down to "About This Macintosh".  A window will appear 
telling you the OS version, and how much physical RAM you have.

You will still need to have a small partition with MacOS on otherwise the 
YDL won't boot.  You will definately need more RAM.  I *think* you can put 
a second HD into an 8200, but you should also be able to have both MacOS 
(something like 7.6.1, which is pretty small) and YDL on the same 
partition.  You'll probably find using X windows a nightmare and might have 
to settle for command line only Linux.  Of course to do that you'll need a 
bootable MacOS disc (cd or floppy), to repartition the drive and install a 
base MacOS.  I believe the machine can use OS 7.5.3 which luckilly for you 
is the last freely downloadable OS from Apple.

Hope this is of some help
Suzanne