What Linux distro would work and be usable on this machine?(it is of course a 75MHz 603.) It has.. hmm... somewhere between 48 and 64MB of RAM in it at the moment and around 1.5gigs of hard drive.
Preferably, it's possible to download the reccomended distro from a web site somewhere... and now we hit the second question. Since the only computer in my house with a burner is the Presario running win95 and Nero Express, how would I go about burning the installer to CD so the Mac could boot from it?
PS- yup, I'm really, really bored today, so installing a weird OS on a dodgy old Mac seems like fun.
If you download from the website in ISO image file, just burn that, and if its meant to boot the mac, the cd that it makes should boot just fine. how ever if its not meant to boot it, i have no clue about linux. Guys wanna help him some? i know nothing about other OS's besides apple. i did however have a 6200 back in the day, slow isnt even the begining.....
Have a look here, http://nubus-pmac.sourceforge.net/
and here http://infolinux.de/ppc/
I have tried this (with my performa 6200), however, i could not get it to start the installer, your milage may vary!
Hmm... maybe I should do this on my 6500 or an iMac instead... anyone ever had a good experience with Linux on a 52/53/62/6300-series Mac?
Should be fine if you stick to the command line.
Just to note, Applefritter briefly ran on Yellow Dog running on a 6400-family system some years ago. (Sometime in 2001, I think.) Of course, that's more like a 6500 then a 6200.
Considering how, well, marginal that was, I'd hate to see it on a 6200.
--Peace
You can use Linux/OSX/OS9 easily on an iMac with yaboot. NewWorld Macs make running different OSs much easier. Trying to get Linux on a NuBus based 6200 is asking for trouble. YDL Support pages says that the 62xx doesn't work, but that NuBus/PMac page has an installer set for YDL 3.0... Still an iMac would just be a whole lot easier to get working. I'd only do something like the 62xx if I really wanted a project to kill time.
On a 75MHz 601 (Power Macintosh 7200) and an 80MHz 8100. I would have to say the the command line was ok, but, I had to give the Macs a 7-9 Min. head start before I used it. (which was why I hardly ever powered it down.) Now, when I upgraded the 7200 to 120MHz 601 (Just swapped the board) It ran ok. Now, I know that 603e's are slower than 603's and 601's so, if it is a 603e, forget it. It will be like running it on a 66MHz 6100.
Actually the 603e is faster than the 603, which is more efficient than the 601. So theoretically the 75MHz 603 in the 6200 is slightly faster than the 601 in the 6100/66, but the 6200 motherboard is garbage so it's essentialy the same machine, only overall the 6100 is more efficient due to its hunky-dory PowerPC-based motherboard, compared to the 6200s el-cheapo modded LC630(etc)-esque board.
Stuff that, I just booted the 6200 into OS 7.5.5 to make sure it worked and uh... it's... too slow even for OS 7! And I like the iMacs to run OS X, even the two I never use, so it'll be the 300MHz 6500 that gets Linuxed. Well, as soon as I work out why its motherboard isn't recognizing any SCSI devices any more.
I think you're thinking of the RackMac TZ, which has a Tanzania (Power Mac 4400) motherboard. If memory serves, it had some flakey RAM, which is why it seemed so marginal.
Ah. I always forget the distinction between the 4400 and 6400 series. (I think in most respects other then form factor they're pretty much the same, but... anyway.)
It may of been RAM, but the machine sure had a tendancy to keel over during heavy disk access. (Its lack of IDE DMA support, and the crufty state of the linux drivers for Mac hardware certainly didn't help much.)
To be fair, the system probably would of been fine doing light duty as a desktop machine. It just didn't hold up running Perl CGI at high load averages. Doing that tends to find any weak spots a system might have. ;^>
--Peace