Very Computer

Quote:>I have an old Mac Centris 610 that is just sitting in the closet getting
>dusty. I have read a little about Linux for Macs with 68k processors.
>How viable is this distribution of Linux? is it possible to run X
>windows or star office with this version of linux? from what i can tell
>the answer is "sort of". more specific advice is better though.

Getting an IA-32-specific application such as Star Office working would be
considerably more challenging as you have two choices of problems:

a) Emulating IA-32 code on the 68K.  This would, no doubt, be an unhappy
process, and would require considerably more effort than the hardware is
likely to be worth...

alternatively,

b) One could run Star Office on an IA-32 system and export the DISPLAY to
the Mac/68K host.  Unfortunately, reports were that Ethernet hardware
support is somewhat elusive, thus making it difficult to get a fast enough
pipeline to get data over to the Mac host.

It seems to me that when you consider that one can construct a PCI-bus-based
PC for under $1000 (I just installed a Pentium Pro 200 box with 64MB RAM and
4GB of disk for $950), a Mac 68K system does not likely have the horsepower
to be terribly viable in comparison.

Running Linux on a 68K box certainly has "hack" value; if you can do it, I
as well as others will be impressed by your "hacking prowess."  

In terms of it being useful for its own sake, I rather think that you would
be better off getting an X server that runs under MacOS and letting it run
some client software that is natively hosted atop MacOS.

--
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.  
-- Henry Spencer          <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>

Thanks for the tip. I kinda figured that was the deal. I'm not smart
enough to hack a linux box....I would not even know how to do that.

I just thought it would be cool to run a redhat linux type deal on a
mac, but such a deal doesn't exist.

So what do I do with this thing? It can still do Netscape and Email. Not
great, but it can....

Try NetBSD - info available at www.netbsd.org
I'm looking forward to trying to install it this week on a Powerbook 520. Just had the memory increased from 4 to 20 megs. (it will run on 4, but barely).

Quote:>So what do I do with this thing? It can still do Netscape and Email. Not
>great, but it can....

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