OS X 10.2.8 on PowerBook Wallstreet

Total Konfuzion

Total Konfuzion

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Specs are:

Wallstreet @ 266mhz
4gb HDD
192mb Ram
Cisco Aironet wireless card

This PB is rock solid under OS 9.2.2. I've never had any real issues with it until I loaded up Jaguar. Now I believe Apple states that the wallstreet officially supports OS 10.2 on their site somewhere so I thought I'd give it a try. Everything actually worked out great. The install went smoothly, etc.. I started loading applications and had to reboot a couple of times to get things going and everything was still humming along. I was doing some multi-tasking, surfing the web, typing up a word doc, nothing too intensive when I received a kernel panic. Things went sour after that.

The machine itself would boot but only after it started up, and reboot all by itself twice. There was some video distortion that I noticed as well, but only during bootup and shutdown. What worried me was how dang hot the Wallstreet was. I mean..thermo-meltdown. So here is where I need some help.

I've popped up the keyboard and made sure that the heatshield was properly installed. Everything checks out. I've also used some can air to make sure it wasn't clogged with dust or something simple like that.

Questions are:
1.) Is there a way to test my Powerbook's fan to make sure it's working? Maybe even an OS 9 application that max's the cpu?
2.) Is there a bootable memory test out there for PPC architecture?

Wish this PB would run stable in OS 10, we'll get there hopefully.
 
nixgeek:

My HDD is only 4GB so the partition is definitely small enough. Maybe even too small? Given that this runs anything I throw at it under OS 9.2.2 I'm not thinking it's an actual heat issue. Wallstreets did indeed get very hot. I've also searched the forums and found that others have experienced the "backlight issue" with wallstreet and 10.2.8.

I'm thinking I'd better just run what runs well and that's OS 9. My only gripe with OS 9 is web surfing. iCab is just garbage and wamcom works somewhat okay but they are all dated and unsupported by more and more websites everyday.

Wish they had a firefox for OS 9.2.2
 
Ah OK. That should be OK if you could fit it in there.

Are you installing with a retail copy of Jaguar? Remember that the gray discs are only meant for the Macs that they ship with.

You could also run a PowerPC port of GNU/Linux such as Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora. That way you would still have the latest client software for internet and other stuff. If not, then just make sure you're using a retail copy of 10.2.
 
Oh Jag installed...just didn't run very well. It's an old machine...it was actually expected, now the linux idea...hmm. That's a very decent option. Which one would you recommend? I'm not too familiar with linux distros for PPC
 
Total Konfuzion said:
Oh Jag installed...just didn't run very well. It's an old machine...it was actually expected, now the linux idea...hmm. That's a very decent option. Which one would you recommend? I'm not too familiar with linux distros for PPC
Click to expand...

I would recommend Ubuntu, followed by Debian. The APT package management system is really good. If you're particular to RPM-based distributions, Fedora or OpenSUSE would be the way to go (Fedora is pretty decent now...can't speak for OpenSUSE, but many say it's really good).

Now, the only problem is that your particular PowerBook is what's considered an "Old World Mac". This means that it actually uses a hardware ROM and requires a Mac OS installation. While it's not impossible to get GNU/Linux installed on it, it does take some extra work. "New World Macs" (basically any Macintosh that has USB) has the ROM based in software (ROM-on-RAM is what they termed it at the time) so you don't need a Mac OS installation. These Macs can install GNU/Linux as easily as a PC can (with a few exceptions, of course) and can also exclusively run GNU/Linux if you want them to. Considering that your Wallstreet is an Old World Mac, I would probably tell you to stay with Jaguar on it and add as much RAM as you can, especially if you're not familiar with GNU/Linux.

You might also want to check out Low End Mac's Linux/PPC section as they're working on gathering information on getting Linux/PPC on PowerPC Macs. I'm actually considering putting together a HOW-TO for installing Linux/PPC on Old World Macs for there and might do the same for here.

Here are some links that you might find useful from LEM:
http://lowendmac.com/ed/moore/08cwm/compleat-wallstreet-guide.html
http://lowendmac.com/stotler/08ls/linux-wallstreet-powerbook.html
http://lowendmac.com/stotler/index.html
 
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