My girlfriend bought a second-hand
I did not buy it, someone else did, so I did not check its
compatibility with Linux, like you should always do with a new
machine. As a second-hand machine, it came with no documentation at all. So,
I still do not understand some features. You could find very detailed information about its hardware at
The PowerMacintosh 7200 is no longer manufactured by Apple. The CPU is a 120 Mhz
Because of a RAM extension, it has 144 Mb of memory. I have an Ethernet card.
There is an internal hard disk and two external disks, on the SCSI bus (plus a scanner, which I did not try with Linux yet).
The output of program
device tree used 14980 bytes
Total memory = 144MB; using 1024kB for hash table (at c0300000)
Linux version 2.2.12-2 (root@chewbacca.terraplex.com) (gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314 (egcs-1.1.2 release)) #1 Fri Oct 8 18:07:08 MDT 1999
PCI bus 0 controlled by bandit at f2000000
Cache coherency enabled for bandit/PSX at f2000000
System has 32 possible interrupts
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 119.19 BogoMIPS
Memory: 142260k available (1556k kernel code, 3496k data, 144k init) [c0000000,c9000000]
DENTRY hash table entries: 262144 (order: 9, 2097152 bytes)
Buffer-cache hash table entries: 262144 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
adb devices: [2]: 2 5 [3]: 3 1
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0 for Linux NET4.0.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 262144 bhash 65536)
Starting kswapd v 1.5
OHCI USB Driver loading
USB HID boot protocol mouse driver registered.
USB Printer support registered.
MacOS display is /platinu
Total VRAM = 1MB 0001
Monitor sense value = 0x60b, using video mode 13 and color mode 0.
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 104x39
fb0: platinum frame buffer device
ADB keyboard at 2, handler set to 3
ADB mouse at 3, handler set to 2
PowerMac Z8530 serial driver version 1.01
tty00 at 0xf3013020 (irq = 15) is a Z8530 ESCC, port = modem
tty01 at 0xf3013000 (irq = 16) is a Z8530 ESCC, port = printer
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
Macintosh ADB mouse driver installed.
Macintosh non-volatile memory driver v1.0
Sound initialization started
Sound initialization complete
DMA sound driver installed, using 4 buffers of 32k.
RAM disk driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size
loop: registered device at major 7
fd0: SWIM3 floppy controller
scsi0 : 53C94
scsi : 1 host.
USB hub driver registered
Vendor: QUANTUM Model: TRB540S Rev: 0405
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Vendor: UMAX Model: Astra 610S Rev: V1.3
Type: Scanner ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Vendor: MICROP Model: 1924-21MZ1077802 Rev: HZ2P
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi disk sdb at scsi0, channel 0, id 2, lun 0
Vendor: MATSHITA Model: CD-ROM CR-8008 Rev: 8.0e
Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 3, lun 0
Vendor: QUANTUM Model: FIREBALL_TM1280S Rev: 300N
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi disk sdc at scsi0, channel 0, id 6, lun 0
scsi : detected 1 SCSI cdrom 3 SCSI disks total.
Uniform CDROM driver Revision: 2.55
SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 1065235 [520 MB] [0.5 GB]
SCSI device sdb: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 4096656 [2000 MB] [2.0 GB]
SCSI device sdc: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 2503872 [1222 MB] [1.2 GB]
PPP: version 2.3.7 (demand dialling)
TCP compression code copyright 1989 Regents of the University of California
PPP line discipline registered.
eth0: MACE at 00:05:02:88:8d:56, chip revision 25.64
And
PCI devices found:
Bus 0, device 11, function 0:
Host bridge: Apple Bandit (rev 3).
Medium devsel. Fast back-to-back capable. Master Capable. Latency=32.
Bus 0, device 16, function 0:
Hot Swap Controller: Apple Grand Central (rev 2).
Medium devsel. Master Capable. Latency=32.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf3000000 [0xf3000000].
I've choosen Linux for the reasons mentioned before. It could have been
Apart from that, the software is typical of an Unix box. The whole stuff, including monsters like
Before starting the installation, I had to think about a proper
partitioning. Two hard disks were already partitioned (with a
I used the pdisk tool, in its MacOS version, to create
There is also a Unix version of pdisk, available as a RPM or as source. But do not use cfdisk (menu "Partition a hard disk") on a disk which MacOS may use.
So, my partitions are not seen by fdisk, but it is a minor annoyance. Here is what pdisk says:
Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/sdb'
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 54 @ 64
3: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 74 @ 118
4: Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 192
5: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 root 1946257 @ 704 (950.3M)
6: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 273301 @ 1946961 (133.4M)
7: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 home 423430 @ 2220262 (206.8M)
8: Apple_HFS Sans titre 4 1452954 @ 2643692 (709.5M)
9: Apple_Free Extra 10 @ 4096646
Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=4096655 (2.0G)
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: @ 64 for 21, type=0x1
2: @ 118 for 32, type=0xffff
Since the Debian installer requires the base system to be found
somewhere and since the Linux kernel can read HFS (MacOS filesystem),
I put
For booting the Linux kernel, in order to use the installer, there are typically several options:
To be sure I didn't risk to change anything on the MacOS side, I used BootX. I put the Debian kernel in the "Linux Kernels" folder into the System folder, and BootX accepted to start it. For reasons I don't know, the current Debian kernel (a Linux 2.2.12) does not see the SCSI disks of the 7200. So, I used the kernel from LinuxPPC, which, while being the same Linux version, works fine. BootX allows you to have several kernels in "Linux kernels" and to switch at will.
After filling the disk with the things I need,
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb5 957792 329024 580112 36% /
/dev/sdb7 205018 1940 192493 1% /home
/dev/sdb8 726466 18779 707687 3% /MacOS/gros-truc
/dev/sdc4 1251763 952594 299169 76% /MacOS/Paulo_2
/dev/sda5 532244 165104 367140 31% /MacOS/Disque_interne
One the base system installed, I quit dselect immediately and everything was installed by apt-get. That way, I'm sure I will only get the minimum I wanted and I still benefit from the dependencies management.
At the time of this writing, I use kernel 2.2.12. It is the precompiled kernel from LinuxPPC, I had no time to recompile a kernel, yet (and upgrading a kernel with BootX is unc onvenient, since BootX can only boot from a MacOS partition). Power off when shutting down works fine.
The Ethernet card was recognized automatically. Nothing special. The kernel sees it that way:
eth0: MACE at 00:05:02:88:8d:56, chip revision 25.64
Since there is a running home server on the same local network, I just had to configure
OSTYPE(debian)dnl
FEATURE(nullclient, `[mail.sources.org]')dnl
FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl
FEATURE(allmasquerade)dnl
FEATURE(use_ct_file)dnl
FEATURE(nouucp)dnl
FEATURE(nodns)dnl
MASQUERADE_AS(sources.org)dnl
The X server for framebuffers (Debian package
At startup, the X server says:
XFree86 Version 3.3.6 / X Window System
(protocol Version 11, revision 0, vendor release 6300)
...
Operating System: Linux 2.3.10 ppc [ELF]
Configured drivers:
FBDev: Server for frame buffer device
(Patchlevel 11): mfb, afb, cfb8, cfb16, cfb32, NCR 77C32BLT (accel), ATI Mach64 (accel), IMS TwinTurbo (accel), 3Dlabs Permedia 2 (accel)
(using VT number 7)
XF86Config: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config
(**) stands for supplied, (--) stands for probed/default values
(**) XKB: disabled
(**) Mouse: type: BusMouse, device: /dev/mouse, buttons: 3
(**) FBDev: Graphics device ID: "Linux Frame Buffer Device"
(**) FBDev: Monitor ID: "Generic Monitor"
(**) FontPath set to "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
(**) FBDev: Using default frame buffer video mode
(--) FBDev: Frame buffer device: platinum
(--) FBDev: Video memory: 1024K @ 0xf1000090
(--) FBDev: MMIO regs: 4K @ 0xf8000000
(--) FBDev: Type 0 type_aux 0 bits_per_pixel 8
(--) FBDev: Hardware accelerator: None
(--) FBDev: No driver support for hardware acceleration
bpp = 8, depth = 8, BitsPerRGB = 8
(--) FBDev: Using cfb8 driver
I didn't test the sound.
A few other references: