[Asterisk-Users] Fwd: YDL

Tue Oct 12 03:46:08 MST 2004

Hi Matt,

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 22:10:24 +1300, matt.riddell at sineapps.com
<matt.riddell at sineapps.com> wrote:
> Seeing as this is off topic I thought I'd post to you directly.

I don't think it's off-topic because I always get a lot of email from
Asterisk users who want to know more about how to turn an old Mac into
an Asterisk server, be it for testing, playing or serious use. So, I
hope you don't mind that I post this reply to the list.

> I have an old PowerPC mac 7200/120.

That's a PCI bus Mac, so yes, in principle it can be used to run YDL,
Asterisk and Zaptel with Zaptel cards.

The 7100 which looks just like the 7200 was still using Nubus, so that
wouldn't have been a suitable machine, but the 7200 is.

For checking up on the hardware specs of those old Macs, see this site:

http://www.everymac.com

and here is your particular machine:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac/stats/powermac_7200_120.html

Perhaps one comment on the apparently low clock rate of only 120 MHz.
Since the recommendation for Asterisk is PIII with at least 300 MHz,
it would seem that a PPC 601 with only 120 MHz is too weak to run
Asterisk, but my experience is that those legacy Macs do surprisingly
well even at those apparently low clock rates.

Having said that, I have not yet tested Asterisk on any Mac with a PPC
601, which was the first generation of the PPC CPU line. The ones I
have been using and that I know of other people have been using were
all PPC 603 and 604 models. So, it will be interesting to see what
feedback you come back with once we get this working for you ;-)

> It won't boot...

Is this because it hasn't got a system installed or is broken?

> is there some way that I can get it to boot up with
> YDL so I can try and format the drive and install asterisk etc?

On this particular machine you need to first boot into a minimal
system and have the linux bootloader launch from there. Not a problem,
I'll show you how you get there.

First a bit of background on this. There are two kinds of Macs: Old
world Macs and new world Macs. New world Macs have Open Firmware (like
for example SUN Sparc and other real computers). This means they can
boot an alternative bootloader directly from Open Firmware. Old world
Macs only boot their own bootloader, so booting Linux is a two stage
process.

A new world Mac can boot YDL directly off CD by holding down the C key
while the machine is starting up and the YDL install disc is in the CD
drive.

Unfortunately, your 7200 is an old world Mac, so you have to do a
little extra work to boot into Linux. You will need an install CD of
an older version of the legacy MacOS, for example MacOS 8 or 8.5.
Apple has made all their old system software available for free
download, so you could download MacOS8 off their website, but I
haven't done this in years so I don't know the pointers.

If you don't find it, I can create an image of the OS8 CD I have and
put it up on my server (100MBit connection, so don't worry about d/l
speeds). You can burn that on CD and then boot your Mac into the
system installer.

You would then use a utility called "Drive Setup" to partition the
disk because you only want a tiny OS8 partition and keep the remainder
of your disk as "Free" for Linux. I have installed OS8 for Linux
bootstrap in as small a partition as 22MB, but you may want to give it
-say- 50-60MB just to be on the safe side. No point spending much time
with that pesky old legacy OS. Make sure you include support for ISO
CD format because you want to be able read the YDL CD.

Once you have a minimal OS8 system on your Mac, boot into that system
and insert the YDL CD. Then you install the Linux bootloader, kernel
and some other utilities onto your OS8 and follow the instructions in
the README on the YDL CD.

When your'e done, simply reboot the machine and it will first boot
into OS8 then autostart a utility that asks you if you want to boot
Linux or continue to boot into OS8. It can be set to time out to a
particular default, ie Linux, so even if you let it alone, it will end
up booting Linux.

The first time you boot into Linux, it will boot into a minimal kernel
and launch Anaconda, the YDL system installer. This will look very
familiar if you have installed Red Hat before. Just proceed as you
would on any Intel box and you will end up with a Linux system on your
Mac.

In some cases I have seen Anaconda having trouble with certain
graphics cards on some Macs which had VGA cards that were not original
or pretty exotic ones. If you know Linux installations in and out, you
might still be able to guess what is showing on the screen even though
it is largely incomprehensible and complete the installation even if
the graphic card is unsupported. If it's just too bad, you could get
some vanilla VGA card from the junk yard and do the installation with
that. Or you could install using the serial console. I haven't done
this myself but some YDL folks told me that they did. Then again, I
don't think your 7200 will have such a fancy VGA card that the YDL
installer cannot handle it.

Last but not least, I'd like to mention that there is always TerraSoft
Solutions, which is in respect of YDL what Digium is to Asterisk. You
can buy a retail pack of YDL and get installation support and you can
also purchase a hard disk with YDL already pre-installed then put that
into your Mac. Of course this is less likely something you'd be
interesed in but some folks who read the list and want to try a Mac
with YDL as an Asterisk platform might be interested in this option.

hope this helps
if you need any further assistance, let me know.

rgds
benjk

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