Re: Successfully installed Debian 10 on Lombard G3 PowerMac
On 12/28/20 1:54 PM, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> On 12/28/20 9:31 PM, Alex Perez wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> I just wanted to share that I was able to succesfully boot and install
>> Debian 10 using the "official" Debian 10 netinst CD from [1], with the
>> exception of the bootloader, which failed, and I had to handle manually.
>> I also tried booting from the latest snapshot CD image [2], which
>> completely fails to boot, I assume due to the lack of yaboot on the
>> latest image, which is unfortunate, as this appears to be the only way
>> to boot Lombard-based systems, due to the version of OpenFirmware.
>> Despite the hardware being 23 years old, it's usable with Debian 10, and
>> the on-board 100 megabit Ethernet worked fine, out of the box. I'm
>> booting from a 32GB SanDisk Ultra CompactFlash card, installed in the
>> 2.5" drive bay.
>
>
> The lombard was a wonderful computer,
Indeed, and it still is. It's one of the best Mac "bridge" systems,
since it was the first New World PowerBook, yet it still has SCSI, and
even USB 1.
> I had one too in the past ,but it had some strange reliabilty issues
> (I had to hit the poweron button several times and/or wait for minutes
> with the machine plugged in to have it actually boot) I replaced with
> iBook G3 which, at the end, has similar performance, but less fun.
Your Lombard issue may have been related to a failed PMU, or a failed
system board. I had to get a replacement Lombard when my old one stopped
booting, and I haven't had any problems so far with the replacement
system. X11 (Xfce), network, SCSI, and ATA all work. You may want to use
sysvinit instead of systemd (sysvinit works better on some older, slower
systems).
>
>
> Could you try also the latest snapshot Adrian prepared?
>
> How did you handle the installation of the bootloader manually? I
> suppose though tat you are speaking of yaboot. I am struggling to find
> ways to manually install and configure GRUB.
>
>
>
>>
>> Subsequent to the install, I did an update to unstable, and am running
>> kernel 5.9 without issues. Even Xorg starts, and works (ATI Rage LT),
>> albeit with a bit of "wrong color" pixels here and there. I'm not sure
>> why, but it's tolerable as-is.
>
>
> Have you tried forcing the card to 16bit and disabling certain
> acceleration features?
>
> My iBook G3 which runs debian+yaboot succesfully since some years, had
> similar issues. Unfortunately the old ATI driver got severed when the
> transition from XAA to EXA happened.
>
>
>
>>
>> So, I'm wondering what the rationale for removal of yaboot was, given
>> that it excludes a class of machines that were produced in large
>> quantities, where Debian otherwise works fine, except for GRUB/yaboot
>> support.
>
>
> Adrian cited on one side ease of support, since other PPC computers
> use yaboot and, on the other side, the issue that yaboot only
> recognizes HFS and not HFS+ partitions, IIRC
Like Mac OS, Yaboot continues to work within its limitations. I
originally installed Debian 7.8 (with Yaboot), and I'm now running
Debian 7.8, Debian SID, Gentoo, and Mac OS. I use Debian 7.8 to manage
the Yaboot configuration.
>
>
> Riccardo
>
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