How To Create A Bootable Usb For Powerpc Mac G3

  1. How To Create A Bootable Usb For Powerpc Mac G3 Usb
  2. Create A Bootable Usb Mac
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  4. How To Create A Bootable Usb Drive

Famously, when Steve Jobs and his colleagues visited Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center in 1979, he was utterly dazzled by the graphical user interface that Xerox’s Alto computers had adopted. So blinded by the GUI’s brilliance was he that he failed to notice two other key innovations there that day. Here’s Jobs himself, speaking in 1995, on the PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds:

Currently, NewWorld PowerMac systems are known to support USB booting. Make sure you have prepared everything from Section 4.4, “Preparing Files for USB Memory Stick Booting”. To boot a Macintosh system from a USB stick, you will need to use the Open Firmware prompt, since Open Firmware does not search USB storage devices by default.

“One of the things they showed me was object-oriented programming; they showed me that, but I didn’t even see that. The other one they showed me was a networked computer system; they had over a hundred Alto computers all networked using email etc, etc; I didn’t even see that.”

And I’ve been thinking about that recently, ever since developer James Thomson kindly donated a Power Macintosh G3 to Think Retro, because it brought into focus something you can’t help but think about if you spend much time playing around with vintage computers.

Boot a Mac today, and it will be seconds before you’re connected—apparently magically, thanks to Wi-Fi—to a network, and from there connected seamlessly to the Internet.

Reinstalling Mac OS 9 on a PowerMac G4 MDD. The PowerMac G4 MDD was Apple’s last Mac capable of dual-booting into both Mac OS 9 and OS X. The last of the G4 towers, this model was originally introduced in 2002, briefly evolved into an OS X-only configuration with FireWire 800 in 2003, then returned to the original design for another year. Dec 30, 2014 Once done, simply eject the USB stick and insert it in the USB port on your Clamshell. For this to work for me, I had to ensure there was no disc in the CD drive of the Clamshell. Hold down C and power on the Clamshell. Keep the C key pressed until you see the big grey Apple logo on the screen. Keep in mind the USB port on the Clamshell is only. This Mac OS 9.2.2 'boot kit' was made by @that-ben and makes the process of booting (and installing) Mac OS 9 on any G3 and most G4's from an USB stick a little bit easier, because not all the Mac OS 9 install CD images can be used to boot a Mac from an unlocked volume (such as from an USB stick or hard drive). Mac OS X Version 10.3 requires a Macintosh with a PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor, built-in. USB; at least 128MB of physical RAM (Miss Mac recommends at. Item Description For sale is a used Apple iMac 27' 2017 5K Retina - Intel Core i5-7500 3.

Boot a vintage Mac, though, and the same is unlikely to be true. Wi-Fi, of course, is still a pretty new thing, so it’s no surprise that it’s unlikely to feature even as you start to move backwards along the hardware timeline, and even if a device has Wi-Fi, you might run into problems joining it to your network, since, for example, modern encryption standards may not be supported. ethernet too is increasingly a premium or optional feature as you push further back in the Mac’s history, and although we had LocalTalk essentially for ever, it feels ponderous and fiddly by today’s standards, today when everything is connected to fast, frictionless LANs and WANs.

Besides, in those early days of the Mac, networking was just about sharing files and sharing network resources such as printers. For most of us, though, at least at home, that kind of stuff—puttering about on the network of devices within our homes—represents a vanishingly small percentage of what we actually use our networks for. The overwhelming majority of the traffic on our networks is actually flowing straight out of and into our apartments, condos, and houses as we become more and more dependent on the Internet and the world-wide web for work and for play.

Perhaps I’m not typical, but I suspect that, like me, when you boot a vintage Mac, the first actual thing you do, after admiring the hardware and OS, and having a bit of a poke around in the Control Panels, is go to launch a browser so you could share your latest acquisition on Twitter, catch up with what’s happening on Facebook, or perhaps satisfy an itch to catch up with House of Cards on Netflix. And of course you can’t—even if you succeed in connecting it to the Internet, the browser standards and media requirements have moved on so much that asking it to display anything more complex than google.com is almost guaranteed to fail—as here, loading the Macworld homepage on the G3.

It’s a notable shift in how we use computers now compared to only a few years ago. Today, a computer that effectively doesn’t connect to the Internet strikes a regular user as pretty useless, and it makes you wonder, really, what the hell we used computers for in the days before the Internet.

Now look, since we’re all gathered around it in my living room, I can’t let you go without a little tour around the G3 itself. First, here’s how I got it online.

Happily, it has an ethernet port, so that’s already most of the hurdles crossed. Unfortunately, I don’t have any space to set it up next to my router, so I needed to make it wireless. Smarter people than me will know if there’s a way to fit an 802.11 card in one of its PCI slots and have Mac OS 8.1 recognize it, but I had a quicker and simpler solution: a Wi-Fi adapter. This connects to the ethernet port and is configured via its internal web server; as far as the Mac is concerned, it’s just connected to a regular ethernet network, but the adapter is actually passing off the data to Wi-Fi. Some of these adapters are mains powered, but mine happens to be powered through USB. That would ordinarily be useless in a Mac that predates Apple’s adoption of USB, but James happens to have fitted a PCI USB card in this one. It needs Mac OS 9.1 to actually use the card, but even without it, with the stock Mac OS 8.1 that the G3 came with, it still dumbly supplies power, which is all I need. Boom—my G3 is now on Wi-Fi.

The Power Macintosh G3 minitower is also just a marvelous hunk of hardware. It’s big, by today’s standards, but that isn’t only a bad thing in my eyes. For someone of my generation there’s something pleasing and right about a computer unapologetically announcing its presence on a desk like this, and the stunning K2 case design, introduced with the Power Mac 8600 and 9600, is the perfect, ultimate refinement of the beige box, speaking of power and capability. I love that we see hints too of what’s coming next with the Blue & White G3 and iMac, with that translucent button on the top edge, which unlocks the side panel.

And once you have unlocked that side panel, you get access to the G3’s guts—in a truly fantastic way. It’s not that you can poke around inside the case once you’ve removed the panel; set the whole thing down on the opposite side and the hinged top section pivots up and out of the way; that cut-away step in the case above the power button is revealed not just to be a jaunty design touch, but integral to the mechanics and ergonomics of the Mac. Design, as Jobs said, is how it works.

Spot the other hints of translucent plastic too, on the latches that unlock this swing door.

This beige Power Macintosh G3 might be something of a relic, a device that marks the final period of the final sentence of a particular chapter on design language and vision for computers. Not long after, we had the iMac, which presaged a huge shift not just in how we used computers but in the kinds of people who use computers. I adore, it, though. It’s perfectly emblematic of Apple in a particular era, down but still punching, still fighting, still doing astonishing, delightful work, and striving, with the G3 processor, to reinvent itself and secure its future.

Bootable

It marks, too, a mid-point between Jobs’ visit to PARC and today, and in that time we’ve seen networking and the internet go from being something so completely radical that Jobs didn’t notice it, to so completely ubiquitous that we don’t notice it either.

Note: Due to limited device availability, PowerPC 32-bit (powerpc) port of AOSC OS is only tested on G3/G4-based, NewWorld Apple Macintosh computers; PowerPC 64-bit (ppc64, Big Endian) port of AOSC OS is only tested on G5-based Apple Macintosh computers. So yes, these ports are Macintosh-specific as it stands now.

As stated above, this guide is specific to installing AOSC OS on PowerPC-based (old!) Apple Macintosh computers, using the Yaboot bootloader. Installation is aided with a copy of Debian or Ubuntu Live CD/DVD. Manual installation of AOSC OS on these computers may be quite complex, and each step is crucial for a successful installation - please do not skip any steps!

  • Any commands listed below starting with a # means that the commands are run as the root user.

All PowerPC 32/64-bit tarballs are generic (universal for all supported devices), the only thing you would have to do here is choosing your favourite one - appropriate for your taste and your use case.

Another consideration is whether your device is capable for a specific variant, please consult the PowerPC system requirements page for more information.

Bootable§

  • Base
  • MATE
  • XFCE
  • LXDE
  • i3 Window Manager
Create a bootable usb from iso

Non-bootable§

  • Container
  • BuildKit

We are not going to discuss the deployment of Container and BuildKit in this guide, please check for the guide in AOSC Cadet Training.

For the purpose of this guide, we recommend that you use a copy of Lubuntu 16.04 LTS, from one of the variants below:

  • Desktop image, download.
  • Alternate image, download.

Now, dump the image(s) to your USB flash drive - most NewWorld PowerPC Macintosh supports booting from USB devices.

Where:

  • nameofimage.iso is the filename of your downloaded Lubuntu ISO file.
  • /dev/sdX is the device file for your USB flash disk.

You may either boot Lubuntu from a USB flash disk, or from a CD/DVD disc - use the latter only if you can't boot from USB, or if you are using a USB 1.1-based G3 system (burning ISOs should be very easy, not really worth covering here).

Booting from USB Flash Disk§

Try holding Option key right after pressing the power button. If a blue screen with your flash drive show up, you are lucky as you just need to wait until the watch cursor changes back to the normal pointer, click on the Lubuntu image, then on the right arrow to boot. If it did not work that way, please keep reading to make an attempt on manual booting with Open Firmware.

To boot from a USB flash disk, you will need to enter Open Firmware command line when booting up your Macintosh. Enter the Open Firmware command line with the following key combination:

After you are greeted with OK and a Open Firmware command line (should be white background with black text), enter the following command (assuming no USB hub or other flash disks are attached):

Note, boot command might differ, on an Early-2005 12-inch PowerBook G4 (1.5GHz G4), the command should be as follows (if using the command above, you will see a gray background with a 'forbidden' symbol):

You should be greeted with a boot menu:

  • If you are using G3/G4, please enter linux32 and press Enter.
  • If you are using G5, please enter linux64 and press Enter.

Booting from CD/DVD§

Hold c while powering on your PowerPC Macintosh to boot from CD/DVD, you should be greeted with a boot menu:

  • If you are using G3/G4, please enter linux32 and press Enter.
  • If you are using G5, please enter linux64 and press Enter.

Configuring Partitions§

PowerPC Macintoshs uses the so-called Apple Partition Map, which could sound very abstract to many modern (PC) system users. Special tools are also needed to properly partition a hard drive for installation. In a nutshell:

  • The first partition is an abstract mapping of the partition map.
  • The second partition is the 'Bootstrap' partition, containing bootloaders.
  • Everything after the first two are free-for-alls.

The first partition won't be able to be mounted as it is the partition map itself, while the second partition is HFS (not HFS+).

The guide below assumes that you do not have any operating system installed on your hard drive, and that no data will be kept (because if you do have an OS installed already, you won't need to get through all this hassle anyway - just resize one of the partitions and create another one for AOSC OS). We will partition the hard drive using the mac-fdisk utility, assuming you are installing AOSC OS onto /dev/sda:

Then, in this exact order:

  • Press i to initialize the partition map, thus creating the weird first partition.
  • Press b to create the 'Bootstrap' partition.

And the rest is up to you. G3/G4 systems generally comes with a (very) small amount of RAM, we recommend that you create a swap partition sized at least 4GB - to ensure daily usage.

Format the 'Bootstrap' partition:

First of all, mount your system partition (not the 'Bootstrap' partition), for this guide, mount it at /mnt - assuming that the partition is /dev/sda3, as the first two will be taken by the 'Map' and 'Bootstrap' partitions:

Additionally, say, if you have /dev/sda4 for /home:

And now, un-tar the tarball:

For a more exciting experience, add verbosity:

Here below are some extra steps before you configure your bootloader - strongly recommended to avoid potential issues later.

/etc/fstab Generation§

If you have chosen to use multi-partition layout for your AOSC OS installation, you will need to configure your /etc/fstab file, one fast way to achieve this is genfstab:

Bind mount system/pseudo directories§

Commands in all sections below are executed from chroot.

But first of all, enter AOSC OS chroot environment:

For G5-based systems, you may not be able to enter chroot, as the Lubuntu Live provided is 32-bit, while the system to be installed is 64-bit. Please install the following package:

Update, Your, System!§

New tarball releases comes out roughly each season, and it is generally a wise choice to update your system first - just to get rid of some old bugs since the tarball's release:

Initialization RAM Disk§

Use the following command to create initialization RAM disk for AOSC OS.

All commands below are run from within chroot.

PowerPC-based Macintosh systems use Yaboot as the default bootloader, to install Yaboot:

Create

If you have installed AOSC OS on /dev/sda3, there is no need to make extra changes to the Yaboot configurations. If not, mount the 'Bootstrap' partition:

How To Create A Bootable Usb For Powerpc Mac G3

And edit /etc/yaboot.conf according to the comments provided.

AOSC OS tarball releases comes with a default aosc user, and the root user disabled. We recommend that you change the name and password of the default user before you reboot into AOSC OS - while leaving the password empty for the root user - you can always use sudo for your superuser needs.

The default password for aosc is anthon.

All commands below are run from within chroot.

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Renaming Mr. aosc§

To rename the aosc account:

Where username is the new name you would want to have for aosc.

Resetting Password§

To reset the password for your renamed aosc user:

Where username is your new user name.

Enabling Root§

Although strongly discouraged, you can enable the root user by setting a password for root:

Decent Linux users need not the root user.

Setting System Timezone§

Timezone info are stored in /usr/share/zoneinfo/<region>/<city>.

Setting System Language§

AOSC OS enables all languages with UTF-8 encoding by default. In rare cases where you (really) want to disable some languages or enable non UTF-8 encodings, edit /etc/locale.gen as needed and execute locale-gen as root (which might take a long time).

To set default language for all users, edit /etc/locale.conf. For example, to set system lanaguage to Chinese Simplified (China):

Notes: After you rebooted the computer into the new system, you may use the localectl command to do this:

Setting System Hostname§

To set a hostname for the system, edit /etc/hostname. For example, to set the hostname to be MyNewComputer:

Notes: After you rebooted the computer into the new system, you may use the hostnamectl command to do this:

How To Create A Bootable Usb For Powerpc Mac G3 Usb

This section contains extra information regarding specific devices, and changes needed to fix some known issues found within the ports.

Create A Bootable Usb Mac

Uniprocessor or SMP?§

By design, we needed to provide two versions of Linux Kernel for PowerPC 32-bit systems, one for uniprocessor (or single processor) systems (any iMac G3/G4/G5, iBook G3/G4, and PowerBook G3/G4), and another for SMP-enabled multi-processor systems (some PowerMac G3/G4/G5).

At Yaboot prompt, pressing Enter will boot the aoscuni, or the Kernel for uniprocessor systems (it will work on SMP systems, but showing only one processor core); type in aoscsmp and press Enter will boot the Kernel for SMP systems (do not use this on uni-processor systems, as the Kernel will lock up at the first instance).

ATI Systems§

Some PowerPC Macintosh models comes with ATI graphics, and this can be problematic, as the system may lock up randomly when running X11. We will have to disable 3D acceleration to get these systems usable (albeit slower OpenGL performance throughput).

Mount the 'Bootstrap' partition:

And edit /etc/yaboot.conf, to add radeon.agpmode=-1 to each append= lines.

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Wild Colors with OpenGL§

How To Create A Bootable Usb Drive

Arrrrrghhh! Stop shouting about this, we can't do anything about this until the Kernel DRM and Mesa developers have big endian systems on their hands.

Gosh! Minecraft in blue and red is infuriating.