Hi,

I'm a newbie who's just managed to install Debian 3.1 on an Old-World
PCI PPC 8500. All I've managed so far is a command-line interface. For
some reason, Gnome Display Manager is unable to run - error message
indicating that the Xserver is unable to run, apparently not recognizing
the display device. I would appreciate any advice as to how I can, if at
all possible, boot into the GUI (X Windows?).

My system setup:

PCI PowerPC 8500 upgraded with 500Mhz G3 daughter card
128MB RAM
2 x 4 gig hard drives, with one dedicated for Debian.
Running OS 9.2 and using BootX Bootloader
15" Compaq CRT monitor (with adapter)
Kensingnton 4-button ADB Mouse


YF

"YF Yong" <yinfui@optusnet.com.au> wrote in message
news:yinfui-E5B622.18013204072006@news-vip.optusnet.com.au...
> Hi,
>
> I'm a newbie who's just managed to install Debian 3.1 on an Old-World
> PCI PPC 8500. All I've managed so far is a command-line interface. For
> some reason, Gnome Display Manager is unable to run - error message
> indicating that the Xserver is unable to run, apparently not recognizing
> the display device. I would appreciate any advice as to how I can, if at
> all possible, boot into the GUI (X Windows?).
>
> My system setup:
>
> PCI PowerPC 8500 upgraded with 500Mhz G3 daughter card
> 128MB RAM
> 2 x 4 gig hard drives, with one dedicated for Debian.
> Running OS 9.2 and using BootX Bootloader
> 15" Compaq CRT monitor (with adapter)
> Kensingnton 4-button ADB Mouse

What is your time worth? 4 Gigs is kind of small for a modern Linux
distribution, due to the need for big old compilers, X libraries, etc. And
if it's more than a day's work to keep playing with this, I'd like to
recommend simply buying or dumpster diving a faster x86 based box.

Debian is also famous for their "stable" being way, way behind their
"testing" versions in device drivers. Can you check at boot time for the
chipsets reported by the booting hardware and what it reports for video? Or
is that tough to find with the BIOS for your PPC hardware?

In article <776dnYtv8-Lv5TfZnZ2dnUVZ_rqdnZ2d@comcast.com>,
"Nico Kadel-Garcia" <nkadel@comcast.net> wrote:

> "YF Yong" <yinfui@optusnet.com.au> wrote in message
> news:yinfui-E5B622.18013204072006@news-vip.optusnet.com.au...
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm a newbie who's just managed to install Debian 3.1 on an Old-World
> > PCI PPC 8500. All I've managed so far is a command-line interface. For
> > some reason, Gnome Display Manager is unable to run - error message
> > indicating that the Xserver is unable to run, apparently not recognizing
> > the display device. I would appreciate any advice as to how I can, if at
> > all possible, boot into the GUI (X Windows?).
> >
> > My system setup:
> >
> > PCI PowerPC 8500 upgraded with 500Mhz G3 daughter card
> > 128MB RAM
> > 2 x 4 gig hard drives, with one dedicated for Debian.
> > Running OS 9.2 and using BootX Bootloader
> > 15" Compaq CRT monitor (with adapter)
> > Kensingnton 4-button ADB Mouse
>
> What is your time worth? 4 Gigs is kind of small for a modern Linux
> distribution, due to the need for big old compilers, X libraries, etc. And
> if it's more than a day's work to keep playing with this, I'd like to
> recommend simply buying or dumpster diving a faster x86 based box.
>
> Debian is also famous for their "stable" being way, way behind their
> "testing" versions in device drivers. Can you check at boot time for the
> chipsets reported by the booting hardware and what it reports for video? Or
> is that tough to find with the BIOS for your PPC hardware?

Thanks for your response. Was tinkering to see if I could find some use
for this old 8500. I've upgraded to a newer Mac Mini for my daily use
but was wondering if Linux could give it a new lease of life. Mac OS 9
has been great but it's now "ancient". It would be nice if Linux can
bring it up to date for me in terms of browser and networking capability
(wireless perhaps, or is that wishing too much?). There's not much
hardware info I can view from the machine at boot up. I do wonder if the
onboard video chipset is supported by Debian. Was hoping that perhaps
someone has gone this way before and could give me a tip or two.

YF

YF Yong <yinfui@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> In article <776dnYtv8-Lv5TfZnZ2dnUVZ_rqdnZ2d@comcast.com>,
> "Nico Kadel-Garcia" <nkadel@comcast.net> wrote:

[Mac model 8500 w/500 MHz G3 daughterboard:]

>> What is your time worth? 4 Gigs is kind of small for a modern Linux
>> distribution, due to the need for big old compilers, X libraries, etc. And
>> if it's more than a day's work to keep playing with this, I'd like to
>> recommend simply buying or dumpster diving a faster x86 based box.
>>
>> Debian is also famous for their "stable" being way, way behind their
>> "testing" versions in device drivers. Can you check at boot time for the
>> chipsets reported by the booting hardware and what it reports for video? Or
>> is that tough to find with the BIOS for your PPC hardware?
>
> Thanks for your response. Was tinkering to see if I could find some use
> for this old 8500. I've upgraded to a newer Mac Mini for my daily use
> but was wondering if Linux could give it a new lease of life.

As Nico said, your 2 x 4 GB storage is the most serious constraint.
A modern replacement, if economically justifiable, would go a long way.

For comparison, my main console box is a 700 MHz G3 iBook w/256 MB RAM
and a 30 GB HD, running Ubuntu Linux (a Debian offshoot), but carefully
eschewing GNOME bloatware and instead mostly using Window Maker (out of
lingering fondness for the old NeXTStep platform) and Xfce. Performance
is absolutely fine -- but that's with a slightly faster CPU, twice the
RAM, and four times the disk space yours has.

And, honestly, that 15" monitor does not make for a happy Unix user.
You really _want_ to be at least at 1024x768 resolution, which without
incredibly sharp vision simply doesn't work well at less than 17".

> There's not much
> hardware info I can view from the machine at boot up. I do wonder if the
> onboard video chipset is supported by Debian.

Almost certianly it is. However, you might want to download (yeah, I
know you're in Oz) a live-CD distro for PPC that has really good
hardware autorecognition, such as Xubuntu 6.06 "Dapper Drake" Desktop
disc for PowerPC. ("Xubuntu" means an Ubuntu disk that boots into the
relatively RAM-thrifty Xfce desktop, as opposed to GNOME or KDE.) It
would tell you a great deal, just in what it finds and initialises all
on its own.

--
Cheers, Your eyes are weary from staring at the CRT. You feel
Rick Moen sleepy. Notice how restful it is to watch the cursor
rick@linuxmafia.com blink. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are
yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.