Funk Babblings

Thanks to adammaker, I was able to install MacOS X 10.1 (X.1?) on the PowerBook G3. I also upped the memory to 192MB (though it turned out there was already 128MB installed). This makes me much happier than the old OS 9 stuff.

I went through Apple's OS X download site and grabbed a bunch of software... then couldn't install most of it. Apparently most OS X software these days requires at least version 10.2 of the OS. But I did get Firefox, a big improvement over IE 5.1, except that after installing some extensions and themes all my Firefox scrollbars disappeared. (Turns out the theme I'd installed wasn't quite ready for OS X, so I went back to the default theme.)

I also got the VNC server installed, which means that when I run x2vnc on my Linux machine I can mouse over to the side of the screen and suddenly be controlling the Mac with my usual keyboard and mouse (er, trackball). I also tried using VNC to show the Mac's display on the Linux screen, but OS X's heavy animation and other visual effects were just too much for VNC.

I also tried my Cisco wireless card, but couldn't get it to turn on the card's radio. I had the same problem under OS 9, so I suspect the card just doesn't like to talk to PowerPC machines. (It works fine on Linux on a Pentium III machine.) However, under OS 9 I could get the machine to launch the card out of the slot, but OS X wouldn't eject it.

It looks like I'll be able to use this machine as an auxiliary screen for web browsing and using the terminal to connect to other machines. IE might be useful for testing web pages. But unless I can get a 10.2 upgrade, I'm left without most of the software I'd hoped to be able to try.