OS X stuff

While my Linux box was out of commission I was using OS X 10.2 on a beige G3. It was nice but rather reminded me of Windows 95 in terms of stability (reboot after reboot). It is also tough finding some office programs to fit into a 160MB machine. NeoOffice is an OpenOffice spinoff. It requires 256MB for RAM.

I got a little tired of the reboots and figured I'd try and do something about it at Lowend Mac.com they talked about installing 10.3 and 10.4 with XPostFacto. They said it didn't like the internal video system. Fortunately the machine has some PCI slots and I happen to have a PC PCI video card. I installed XPostFacto and restarted. They were correct about not liking the internal video. I installed the video card, which was an earlier version by the same manufacturer, and the nachine didn't like that either. So my Mac is down for a while but my Linux box is back up.

Some people may say PC PCI cards might cause damage to the Mac or card. I've been reading on the net the cards may actually work. It's a try it and find out sort of thing. I actually confirmed this earlier while hunting for a USB 2.0 card. I found one at a local PC shop. It was a cheap card. What was said on the net was USB 1.1 was no problem. USB 2.0 was only available if the card adhered tightly to the USB 2.0 standard. Apparently Microsoft is more forgiving of sloppy work than OS X. The card only worked with a USB 1.1 device in the G3.