Is there a Knoppix equivelent for PowerPC (Mac)?

[Bill Freeman]

Bill McGonigle writes:
 > On Aug 12, 2004, at 14:43, Bill Freeman wrote:
 > 
 > > 	Just for grins I tried holding C while it booted.  No
 > > difference.  (I get a chord played rather than what I'd call a ding or
 > > dong.)  Might you know how to ask the OS whether it believes that it
 > > has a CD?
 > 
 > Does it sound like this:
 > 
 >    http://www.tcp.com/~dschaub/Files/Crash/cpwrlc.aiff
 > 
 > Those are death-chimes, or BIOS-level boot failures.  A bum drive can 
 > cause that.

	I haven't gone to listen to the sound because 1: I'm not
suffering any crashing, it just goes ahead and boots MacOS no matter
what I type or hold down; and 2. My SO, a MacPerson, has now heard it
and isn't offended by the chime sound.

	Also, the drive works in general, since, once having paper
clipped it to put in the disk, it shows up on the desktop and can be
read (though I'm not sure how to look at a text file, since it bemoans
the lack of an associated application, but at least it reads the
directory information).  It can then eject the CD, so the drawer motor
is working too.

	Probably just the front panel eject button is broken.  I know
that software can tell the drive to ignore the button, but I presume
that the power up default is enabled, and it doesn't seem to matter
how early I press the button.  I'll crack the case when there's time
and have a poke around.  The button is either a separate switch, or a
mechanical remoting from the button on the drive, since the drive is
recessed to far in to the panel for that to be the actual original
drive button.

 > On Aug 12, 2004, at 15:04, Bill Freeman wrote:
 > 
 > >  I wonder if it's firmware predates
 > > bootable CDs.
 > 
 > CD booting goes back to the Mac II line so it's probably not a ROM 
 > issue.

	That's good to know.  I've tried, however, instances of both
the holding (is there a specific range of times that the key press
must fall within?) of and the typing of both just "C" and (though I
suspect that it may only apply to SCSI drives) "CMD-OPT-SHIFT-DELETE",
without success (by which I mean that it just goes ahead and boots
MacOS).  I have also tried the "apple" menu item called something like
"startup disk" where the CD appears and can be highlighted.  There's
no OK or Apply button, but my SO confirms that highlighting it and
closing it is all that you're supposed to have to do.  Same result,
just comes up in MacOS.

	It could be that the Knoppix/PowerPC iso that Chris Brody
pointed out to me at http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/powerPC/ isn't in
a format that the Mac ROM or OS recognizes as bootable.  There doesn't
seem to be any purpose/targeting documentation, but I haven't looked
to hard either.  I guess that I should look for some iso that actually
claims to be MacBootable.

	On the other hand, and old MacFriend says that if I do the
"CMD-OPT-P-R" salute at boot (reset PRAM, equivalent of CMOS on a PC),
I ought to get at least a second chime (or a series of chimes if I
continue to hold the combination).  No dice.  Makes me wonder if
there's a jumper option inside to make the Mac "safe" from such
keyboard manipulations, or some such.  Clearly the PRAM battery is
dead, since it doesn't keep time across a power off, but you'ld think
that resetting PRAM would be enabled in the PRAM is bogus state, else
how?

 > ... but every desktop save the 
 > slot-loading iMacs should have a commodity ATAPI CD-ROM drive with a 
 > button extender.

	Ah.  I'll definitely have to crack the case.

							Bill