iMac 600 MHZ

[Darlene Wallach]

Peter Gort wrote:
> a long time ago, I installed Ubuntu 4 on an old iMac G3 600(blue  
> dalmation thing) I have laying around, and it worked OK.  Then I  
> needed it to run as a Mac for a while for some project work so I  
> erased everything and set it up with Mac OS X 10.3, then 10.4.
> 
> A little while ago I got some new computers and retired the old iMac,  
> which had done sterling service and never failed in any way, and it's  
> over 5 years old now.
> 
> Now I have a need of a DNS server in my local subnet, I thought I'd  
> stick Ubuntu onto it again.  I went for Desktop rather than server so  
> that it could be used to keep 8 year old amused during school  
> holidays.  Boy did I get a shock!, neither 6.06 or 6.10 live cds will  
> boot to a graphical screen, no matter what options I have been able  
> to figure out.  Either I got a completely blank screen or I got a  
> mixed up looking text screen that said the XServer had failed to  
> start.  Eventually I gave up and downloaded the 6.10 alternate CD,  
> and ran an "expert" installation, mostly going with the default  
> settings.  At no time during the installation did it ask for XServer  
> settings, but the install completed without incident and it rebooted.  
> It booted with a strange white square occupying the lower two thirds  
> of the screen.....  However it eventually came to a graphical login  
> screen that looked normal, and I was able to log in, but it is  
> responding so slowly that mouse movements take up to 30 seconds to  
> show on the screen and I've been waiting 10 minutes now for the  
> Preferences sub menu to appear under the System menu.
> 
> Anybody got any idea why this unusably slow thing is happening?  Box  
> is an iMac G3 600 MHz, 512MB RAM, 40G hard drive all of it dedicated  
> to Ubuntu, no Mac OS Partition.  Spec says "ATI RAGE 128 Pro graphics  
> with 8 MB of SDRAM or ATI RAGE 128 Ultra graphics with 16 MB of  
> SDRAM" not sure which I've got.  If I can get it to shut down  
> gracefully I'll reboot from Mac OS CD and find out...
> 
> Peter
> 

Peter,

I apologize for not replying sooner. I forwarded your email
to the person who helped me install Ubuntu 6.06 on my iMac
in case he remembers what steps we took to install. I
haven't seen him reply so here is what I have in my notes.

I have an iMac G3 blueberry
L2 cache 512K unified
cpu 740/750
clock 333.333330MHz
6G hard drive
ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage Pro 215GP (rev 5c)

I have Ubuntu 6.06 LTS installed on my iMac. Someone helped
me with the install. We used expert-powerpc.
Kernel to install - linun-powerpc

boot
Linux single
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

I don't remember nor do I have notes if I did anything else.
My iMac does NOT respond slowly like your iMac does.

Darlene Wallach