gentoo ppc on beige g3

[Mud]

I'm having problems installing gentoo 2005.1 and 2005.0 on a beige
g3/400mhz box. It's got 384mb ram, ati rage 128 16mb card for video in a
pci slot. I've managed to get bootx to start loading the cd....at first I
get a few lines of info on the boot then up pops a cute little penguin in
the upper left corner of my 21" nokia display. The CD runs for a minute
or so then quits....and that's it. At first I thought it had hung but
then just for grins I typed (blindly) "shutdown -h now" and...it shutdown.
So it's not a total flop...but I have a video problem. I've tried
everything I can think of. Bootx with video parameters of: ofonly
aty128fb aty128 aty128:***@85 and no video parameters at all. The
ame result every time...well when I unchecked the video block on bootx
sceen it actually didn't show the penguin anymore...but all else worked
te same. Anyone have any fresh ideas?

Thanks!

coldfire

[David Gurvich]

For gentoo, I would recommend going to forums.gentoo.org
The forums are *very* extensive and active.

Post by Mud
I'm having problems installing gentoo 2005.1 and 2005.0 on a beige
g3/400mhz box. It's got 384mb ram, ati rage 128 16mb card for video in a
pci slot. I've managed to get bootx to start loading the cd....at first I
get a few lines of info on the boot then up pops a cute little penguin in
the upper left corner of my 21" nokia display. The CD runs for a minute
or so then quits....and that's it. At first I thought it had hung but
then just for grins I typed (blindly) "shutdown -h now" and...it shutdown.
So it's not a total flop...but I have a video problem. I've tried
everything I can think of. Bootx with video parameters of: ofonly
ame result every time...well when I unchecked the video block on bootx
sceen it actually didn't show the penguin anymore...but all else worked
te same. Anyone have any fresh ideas?
Thanks!
coldfire

[switcher]

I know there is a revision of the beige that might not be
supported in linux / X11 ...
(about a year ago it didn't work.)

Post by David Gurvich
For gentoo, I would recommend going to forums.gentoo.org
The forums are *very* extensive and active.

Post by Mud
I'm having problems installing gentoo 2005.1 and 2005.0 on a beige
g3/400mhz box. It's got 384mb ram, ati rage 128 16mb card for video in a
pci slot. I've managed to get bootx to start loading the cd....at first I
get a few lines of info on the boot then up pops a cute little penguin in
the upper left corner of my 21" nokia display. The CD runs for a minute
or so then quits....and that's it. At first I thought it had hung but
then just for grins I typed (blindly) "shutdown -h now" and...it shutdown.
So it's not a total flop...but I have a video problem. I've tried
everything I can think of. Bootx with video parameters of: ofonly
ame result every time...well when I unchecked the video block on bootx
sceen it actually didn't show the penguin anymore...but all else worked
te same. Anyone have any fresh ideas?
Thanks!
coldfire

[p***@gmail.com]

1) I have one tower g3 and don't have aty128 card, that card doesn
exist when g3 tower was designed. May be you have one of these but
check. My card is an aty64.

2) aty128 desn't suport 128x1024 resolution at 85 Hz, try 1024 x 768 at
75 Hz.

Hope this help.

Pietro Pesci Feltri

[Mud]

Post by p***@gmail.com
1) I have one tower g3 and don't have aty128 card, that card doesn
exist when g3 tower was designed. May be you have one of these but
check. My card is an aty64.
2) aty128 desn't suport 128x1024 resolution at 85 Hz, try 1024 x 768 at
75 Hz.

Thanks for the response. I'm running the aty128 at ***@85hz right
now in mac OS 8.6 but I'll try ***@75 to see how that does. thanks
for the suggestion.

the aty64 is built into the motherboard....I have thought of digging up an
old apple monitor and hooking it up to the mobo video output. I think
that may be the only solution.

thanks again for your input

coldfire

[Angela Kahealani]

Post by Mud
the aty64 is built into the motherboard....
I have thought of digging up an old apple monitor and
hooking it up to the mobo video output.
I think that may be the only solution.

You are correct to the best of my understanding...
the boot ROMs in the beige G3 are only going to display on
the mobo video... you must use the mobo video during install,
but once you've got linux installed, you can configure linux
to work on your other video output. The G3 will only boot an
MacOS9 system whereupon the Control Panel BootX vectors the
boot process off to your linux installation which then can
activate other video. Once that works, you can do away with
the old Apple video monitor.

[andrea]

Post by Angela Kahealani

Post by Mud
the aty64 is built into the motherboard....
I have thought of digging up an old apple monitor and
hooking it up to the mobo video output.
I think that may be the only solution.

You are correct to the best of my understanding...
the boot ROMs in the beige G3 are only going to display on
the mobo video... you must use the mobo video during install,
but once you've got linux installed, you can configure linux
to work on your other video output. The G3 will only boot an
MacOS9 system whereupon the Control Panel BootX vectors the
boot process off to your linux installation which then can
activate other video. Once that works, you can do away with
the old Apple video monitor.

That sounds interesting, I managed booting linux on a oldworld with a pci
sonata Sd video card chipset trident i suppose without success , you tell
that after a installation is possible to have it working? is there a link
that explain the process?

[Angela Kahealani]

Post by andrea
That sounds interesting, I managed booting linux on a oldworld with a
pci sonata Sd video card chipset trident i suppose without success ,
you tell that after a installation is possible to have it working? is
there a link that explain the process?

well, obviously the linux distro has to support the video card you have,
right? I know nothing of the brand of card you mention... so... back to
http://www.google.com/linux

[p***@gmail.com]

Ok Mud, i don't knew you had 2 video cards.
Angela point's several useful things. May be in extreme case you must
disconnect tha aty128 card in instalation process and then install it.

I have a G4/400 (i am writing this on these machine) that has a aty 128
and the resolution goes up 1024 x 768. I know in MacOS you can do a
better resolution but the Linux drivers for these card is generic and
the best resolution possible until now is 1024 x 768 (in Linux).

Anyway, if you get a better resolution, tell me :).

If you have problems configuring your aty128, then i can post my
XF86config file that working fine.

Tell me how goes the configuration process.

Pietro Pesci Feltri

[Lorenzo]

Post by Mud
I'm having problems installing gentoo 2005.1 and 2005.0 on a beige
g3/400mhz box. It's got 384mb ram, ati rage 128 16mb card for video in a
pci slot. I've managed to get bootx to start loading the cd....at first I
get a few lines of info on the boot then up pops a cute little penguin in
the upper left corner of my 21" nokia display. The CD runs for a minute
or so then quits....and that's it. At first I thought it had hung but
then just for grins I typed (blindly) "shutdown -h now" and...it shutdown.
So it's not a total flop...but I have a video problem. I've tried
everything I can think of. Bootx with video parameters of: ofonly
ame result every time...well when I unchecked the video block on bootx
sceen it actually didn't show the penguin anymore...but all else worked
te same. Anyone have any fresh ideas?
Thanks!
coldfire

I don't know if you got a useful solution to this yet, but I have two
beige G3's. One tower and one desktop. Try these kernel arguments:

ramdisk_size=34000 rw init=/linuxrc looptype=squashfs
loop=/livecd.squashfs udev nodevfs cdroot root=/dev/ram0
video=atyfb:1280x1024

I used these to install 2005.1 on them.

Stop by the gentoo fourms. I started a thread there while I was getting
this all worked out. Leave the video setting in BootX UNchecked.