On 11/3/25 4:02 AM, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
Hi Stan,
Stan Johnson wrote:
Hi Riccardo,
According to Linux, my Wallstreet has a "3D RAGE LT PRO". My Lombard
is similar to your iBook; the Lombard also has a "3D RAGE LT PRO".
lspci tells me:
0000:00:10.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
[AMD/ATI] Rage Mobility L AGP 2x (rev 64)
dmesg instead:
[ 10.872103] atyfb 0000:00:10.0: enabling device (0086 -> 0087)
[ 10.872231] atyfb: using auxiliary register aperture
[ 10.872922] atyfb: 3D RAGE Mobility L (Mach64 LN, AGP 2x) [0x4c4e rev
0x64]
[ 10.873034] atyfb: 4M SDRAM (2:1) (32-bit), 14.31818 MHz XTAL, 230
MHz PLL, 70 Mhz MCLK, 53 MHz XCLK
[ 10.878457] atyfb: monitor sense=0, mode 20
[ 10.930965] aty: Backlight initialized (atybl0)
[ 10.931072] atyfb: fb0: ATY Mach64 frame buffer device on PCI
if the chip is similar, it could be a good thing to verify
configurations and other things in our quest. My PowerBook G3 is long
gone :( so I only have this iBook.
Of course i have a small 800x600 screen, the only real complaint about
the iBook, together with the single USB.
Which bootloader are you using? Your system appears to be a New World
Mac, so either Yaboot or GRUB is supposed to work (though as far as I
know, GRUB doesn't work if you want to be able to boot Mac OS 9 or Mac
OS X from the GRUB menu). Also, GRUB doesn't work at all on the
Lombard, so it might not work on your iBook (I'm not sure since I
don't have an iBook to test). If you're using Yaboot, you can specify
as many kernels as you want (same as in GRUB).
yaboot. I choose long ago, I think back then GRUB was guaranteed not to
work, or I had issues installing it from the installer CD, I don't
remember exactly
The bad
With Yaboot, you can edit the yaboot.conf file directly. You can use
"mac-fdisk -l" or "parted -l" to determine your Apple_Bootstrap
partition, then mount that partition (e.g. "mount /dev/sda9 /mnt" if
your Apple_Bootstrap partition is /dev/sda9). I usually keep a copy of
the last working yaboot.conf in /etc and in the Apple_Bootstrap
partition as yaboot.conf.old and then edit the real yaboot.conf
directly (if you make a mistake, you can boot into Mac OS X by holding
down the option key at boot, then mount the Apple_Bootstrap partition
there to fix yaboot.conf or copy yaboot.conf.old back to yaboot.conf).
MacOS is gone for me, I installed a small SSD PATA and squeeze out all
space. Also, I have no use for Classic
but thangs for reminding me that /boot/yaboot.conf is the source, but
not the actual used file. After using Grub, I got confused.
Depending on your disk space, keeping a very small Mac OS 9 (around
100-200 megabytes minimum) can be helpful, especially when problems come
up. For example, you can use NetBSD's pdisk program in Mac OS 9 to
change disk partitions, even for the active disk (risky but useful in
some situations).
Up to know yaboot does its job though, although the GRUB menu is
convenient for testing many kernel versions.
It's possible to test multiple kernel versions with either GRUB or Yaboot.
By default, GRUB keeps a running list of all the kernels. However, there
seems to be a bug where the UUID of the first GNU/Linux volume is
duplicated for other volumes; this can be fixed by editing the grub.conf
file to correct the affected UUID(s). GRUB can be used just like Yaboot;
i.e. once you have a working grub.conf file, you can edit it to use
/boot/vmlinux and /boot/initrd.img for each GNU/Linux volume, then use
symbolic links to point each vmlinux and initrd.img to the appropriate
kernel and initrd file. I save the real grub.conf to grub.conf.save so I
can restore grub.conf in case the system updates it. It also works to
disable or delete the grub package.
My yaboot.conf is much simpler, it just has two entries one for current,
one for old kernel, but essentially it is enough
I'll post separately about my compatibility findings and maybe they help
you.
Riccardo
