Hi, I'm trying to install Debian (woody, sid or sarge) on a beige G3 powermac. I know next to nothing about the hardware and that's leading me into trouble. So much to learn ... I've been using Linux for almost 11 years, on PCs, Suns, Cobalts, embedded devices, etc. Now with a Mac in front of me I feel like an idiot ;-)
I did get woody's installer up and running from BootX but I want to get rid of MacOS entirely. My understanding is that I should be able to use the Quik bootloader, bypassing the need for MacOS/BootX. I was following the instructions at http://mfdh.ca/apple/debian_on_oldworld_mac.html and the system isn't booting from floppy. Now I have a few problems: - I can just make out that open firmware is onscreen when I boot but unfortunately I cannot read anything else. My monitor displays about 6 copies of openfirware screen in narrow vertical bands, there's some shake and it's too fuzzy to understand any of the output. - I can no longer get into MacOS, which I need to do to (easily) reprogram openfirmware The monitor is a 20" Mediascan 7A ... any ideas why openfirmware isn't displaying correctly? On the URL mentioned I see this paragraph: " If you see only a black screen, your system doesn't like the output-device you've specified. In this case, force-reboot (Command-Control-I/O) and immediately zap the PRAM (Command-Option-P-R) for one chime's worth. Release the keys and MacOS will load; launch System Disk and start again with a different guess at the output-device setting." So now another problem I have is that I don't know what is the Command key or what is the I/O key (or does that mean I & O)? I have a Control key in the same place as a PC (lower left), I have an "alt/option" key to the right of that and then a blank key to the right of that ... is the blank (3rd from left) key the command key? Elsewhere I've seen it mentioned that holding down C will make you boot from cdrom. I have a debian-installer beta2 for powerpc available but it doesn't seem to want to boot from that (I'm not sure that it even tries though). Any help you can give me is greatly appreciated, not being able to clearly see openfirmware is the biggest issue right now, if I can get past that then I can hopefully figure out the rest. Thanks! -- Fraser Campbell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.wehave.net/ Georgetown, Ontario, Canada Debian GNU/Linux
