The G3 Wallstreet is taking several attempts to start OS9 from where
I have to launch the Linux boot loader. After several failed attempts
with 'bus error' this morning, having to pull the battery and the
power lead and try again, I decided to take it to pieces to reseat
the ram and CPU. Having done this, I can now report that it's not
made a bit of difference. It still refuses to start Linux at the
first attempt.
I also noticed that Linux isn't recognizing all of the ram. It only
sees just over 100Mb when there is 512Mb installed. OSX sees the
correct amount of memory but OS9 also only sees 128Mb. I tried adding
'mem=512M to the kernel boot line but it seems to have made no
difference.
## Software issues
The old software is becoming a bit of a problem in that the world has
moved on. Even lynx and w3m text based browsers are refusing to work
with some sites, including duckduckgo.com, as they must require a
newer version of TLS. Configuration files from my existing system
also don't work with the earlier versions of the same software
(i3wm). This is proving to be a bit of a pain. I want to search for
new libraries and software to download to fix the situation but I
can't. Only recently I said "Hardware dies, software just gets
forgotten.". However it would seem that if there are external
factors, protocols, APIs, software can fail too.
## Thoughts
The problem I have is that I'm using a 1998 32bit PPC mac. Most major
distros have already left this machine to the digital dumpster,
that's if they ever supported it at all. I have to decide whether to
try to make do with this aged operating system and upgrade the
software that's causing me problems or to try to find a newer OS to
install.
If the hardware wasn't misbehaving then this wouldn't feel like such
a chore, but it really is starting to bother me. All of my daily
computing is being done using this as a VT connected to the tmux
session on my usual computer at the moment because I'm in this do I /
don't I limbo.
