PowerTower Pro with no OS

[Clinton MacDonald]

Mr. Huber:

On Monday, October 27, 2003, at 11:20  AM, Jeremy Huber wrote:
> Ok, so I've inherited a PowerTower Pro, and being a Linux freak, I'd 
> like to use YDL on it. The catch is that the HDD died, so I have no 
> MacOS partition to boot from, nor anything that will partition it to 
> the point that I can install the free 7.5.5 or something like that. 
> All of the "hacked" versions of Drive Tool that will supposedly let 
> you use any drive, I can't get to work.

I assume you have replaced the SCSI hard drive with a newer one -- you 
probably want something in excess of 2.5-3 GB for the Yellow Dog Linux 
installation.

Yes, Macintosh System 7.5.3 will be sufficient to boot your PowerTower 
Pro (I got this information from MacTracker):

<http://www.mactracker.ca>

Also check out Low End Mac:

<http://www.lowendmac.com/power/towerpro.html>

However, you will need a Macintosh to make floppy disks from the images 
to install (I don't remember whether there is a CD-ROM image available 
for Mac OS 7.5.x):

<http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html#system>

You will have to make a minimal Mac OS install partition (150-200 MB 
would suffice), and leave the remainder of the drive unallocated. The 
Mac OS 7.5.3 installation disk will have Drive Setup, a utility that 
should allow you to partition the drive accordingly (I don't think that 
any hacks will be necessary). The way to do this is to create *one* 
Macintosh partition, then resize it down to 150 MB; the remaining space 
is "unallocated." If you want to use the Macintosh OS at all 
(especially the super-nifty Mac-On-Linux that is part of the YDL 
install!), you might want a later version of the OS (up to Mac OS 9.1). 
eBay would be your best bet, here.

Good luck!

Best wishes,
Clint

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT 
net>