Minimum number of partitions needed to boot only Fedora PPC and machine purchase questions.

[Colin Charles]

On Fri, 2005-01-14 at 04:23 -0600, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
> Thanks for the responses.

Sorry for the late-ish response

> Colin Charles wrote:
> > I guess. Its probably an iBook 2 at the very least right? 600MHz or so
> 
> I can't speak to the "2" in "iBook 2" (I don't know what that "2" refers to), I 
> figure it would be around 800MHz.  I just didn't want to spend a lot on an 
> experiment, but I wanted to end up with a machine I could realistically use to 
> do work once in a while.  I'd like to record audio with it (via my Griffin 
> iMic), browse the web, and maybe watch a DVD.

Any iBook 2 will be good (basically a white iBook, rather than the
clamshell ones)

> > Yup! Airport works too :)
> 
> Sounds interesting.  If I inadvertently get an Airport Extreme card, could I 
> just find an Airport card somewhere and plug it in the same cable (underneath 
> the iBook keyboard, if I recall from the last time I took an iBook apart)?

Airport Extreme cards only fit into the iBook G4 units. Any g3 unit
you'll get doesn't handle miniPCI, so you'll only get Airport

Airport = PC Card; Airport Extreme = minipci

> > Yup. You can have just ext3 based partitions and get rid of all traces
> > of HFS/HFS+ if you so please
> 
> This would be ideal because I'll probably never remember special partitions 
> when I go to install.  However, I just found contradictory advice on 
> http://dahlbeck.blogspot.com/2004/12/fedora-ppc-on-imac.html which says that 
> the Apple Boot partition must be the first partition.  This is not a 
> showstopper issue, it's just a 1MB partition that poses a minor install-time 
> hassle if I don't get it right.

It doesn't have to be the first boot partition; I haven't read said blog
posting either tbh

You will *always* need a 1MB apple bootstrap partition. Though unless
your nvram seems hosed, you should be able to have it as any partition
on your system (and not just partition one)

(though the nvram hosing issue could be something i dreamt up; could be
OF being hosed... but this is unlikely, so just let it be not a worry
and keep the partition anywhere, really)
-- 
Colin Charles, byte at aeon.com.my
http://www.bytebot.net/
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, 
then you win." -- Mohandas Gandhi