Subject: Bootstrapping this PPC
From: Mike Melanson (melanson@pcisys.net)
Date: Wed Apr 25 2001 - 22:46:15 MDT
Hi everyone,
It's me again. Pretend I don't remember any basics about using a
Mac. Experienced Mac users will likely think the following message is
pretty funny stuff...
Okay, I'm really bootstrapping this PPC machine. So far, I've
wiped the HD clean and re-installed MacOS v7.5.3. Now I need to get three
files onto the machine: BootX, the ramdisk, and the Linux kernel. They're
too big to fit on floppies (at least 2 of them are). I could transfer them
via the network except that this OS doesn't come with even the most basic
networking utilities. I'm trying to get the Fetch FTP program on the
machine which is small enough to fit on a floppy. So I can get the .hqx
file of the Fetch installer onto the Mac HD. But MacOS can't get past the
idea that it's a "PC" file and doesn't know how to deal with it. I figured
the .hqx extension is natively supported by MacOS, but apparently not. I
downloaded StuffIt Lite in .bin form, but MacOS doesn't know what to do
with that either. Like I said, pretend I don't know anything about this
stuff...how do I install these basic programs that have to be copied via a
MS-DOS disk?
This would almost be enough to make me get a CD-ROM distribution
except that somewhere in the course of all this, my CD-ROM drive
decided to quit working. And here I thought (or had hoped) that Wintel
systems were the ones that arbitrarily broke. Note that the drive was
still working after the OS reinstall; quit working around the time I
started using the floppy drive, if memory serves.
Any ideas? Thanks...
-- -Mike Melanson
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Wed Apr 25 2001 - 22:46:34 MDT