Hey,
I just finished restoring a PB 540. It started out as restoring a 520 but these things happen. When I was done I realized that I had enough parts for a complete -- if somewhat funky -- 520 (except for the AC adapter). So . . . I would like to put some variant of linux or BSD on it to run a recipe database. I googled around but in all honesty I'm pure Mac and never strayed into other OSes so I'm looking for some helpful hints from someone who has actually run something other than Mac OS on a 68k Apple Powerbook. Anybody got a clue or a link for a total linux noob?
Thanks . . .
NetBSD/mac68k has an unofficial release for FPU-less Macs, such as the 520. The 550c is fully supported, and with the "softfloat" release the 520 should work fine too. I've not been looking much in Linux land lately so I dunno if any of the 68k releases support FPU-less Macs. For the most part, NetBSD or OpenBSD seem to have better support for the older machines. Debian may work, but I'm way outta that loop.
EDIT: Just read a few things on the NetBSD list for mac68k, and it seems you may want to stick with the 1.6 series and nto for for the current 2.0 releases as they seem to be having alot of trouble.