Help me solve this computer problem :(

I feel really bad having to ask for help especially since I am one of those people who should honestly know better.

I have this problem..

It's called a Mac.

I can't install FreeBSD on it (my preferred UNIX of choice), I can't find any practical purpose to keep it around AT ALL despite racking my brains in all the months that it has sat here, I can't even sell it for any reasonable amount of money - WTH am I supposed to do? I'm totally frustrated because this piece of hardware cost valuable money (enough to buy me two premium lights), and I basically have gotten near ZERO productive use out of it. I swear from now on I am going to stick to x86 systems, which I can beat the crap out of for years and find all kinds of nonsense to make them do. Last time I 'experimented' with alternative computing platforms (Sun UltraSPARCs) the same thing happened - ended up with a boatload of hardware that simply didn't work out and turned out to be impossible to dispose of.

Someone gimme a good idea quick before it gets turned into a discus.. the throw kind, if you get what I mean.

(the reason why I'm not installing Linux or other variants of UNIX onto the damn thing is because I am so tired and frustrated that I totally cannot be bothered to learn the intricacies a new OS. Those days, sadly, are LONG over - now it's just a damn job).

I have been mostly a PC/DOS/Windows person for 25+ years but learned Mac and OS10 (even had training in OS 10 and server admin) which was forced on me in a job but I still find the Mac an overly restrictive machine and largely for people who like something different and cute. Unless it's one of the newest that can run WinXp I say turn it into a colorful screensaver and make it a permanent part of you home decor :laughing:

Well see the problem is this.....you bought a Mac. I know Windows isn't even close to be being perfect.

Here's how you fix it: Do you own a 12 gauge? If so, get some slugs, take the Mac outback, load the shotgun with the slugs, aim the gun and keep firing till either the magazine on the gun is empty or the Mac is totally gone. Rinse, lather, and repeat as necessary.

This works well on Windows systems to.:huh:

I'd think somebody would give you fair (or even more than fair) value on it here, just from your generous nature in the flashlight community - tell us more about this "Mac" you speak of...

What model? And... why can't you install FreeBSD? Darwin, the UNIX underpinnings of OS X, is Apple's modified version of FreeBSD.

Thanks for the support guys.. I feel a bit better now.

You're right.. it's a Mac and it feels crippled. To a FreeBSD diehard, the house foundations are the same, but they remodeled the entire interior and exterior to the point that I'm now finding it easy to get lost when I go inside, and the 'house' is unrecognizable when I'm outside. Gone are the days when I enjoyed experimenting, which complicates things.

Complicating the problem, this is a legacy Mac, one of their 1.25Ghz PowerPC versions. 256MB RAM, 40GB hard disk, CDRW/DVDROM drive, the baseline configuration. Apple launched their Intel version, far more flexible and powerful, which completely devalued the PPC versions. Heck the Intel version even runs XP, so if I got cheesed off, I'd bring a copy of XP and slap it on, which I cannot with the PowerPC version because the chip is from a totally different architecture.

So I thought of converting it to FreeBSD, but I need the special PPC version, which is still experimental at this time. fdisk for partitioning does not work, and the installer falls on its face when I try to dump it onto existing partitions, everything from 'unable to mount target', 'device busy' or the best one 'signal 11'. I understand that support is limited, no offence to the developers, but it seems that there's just one guy working on it and he's overworked - I can relate to that. So I can't really rely on it.

The best part is that for a tiny fraction of the price of a new Mini, I could go out there, buy some cast-off Dell P4 1.8GHz box from off-lease corporate disposal, boot up FreeBSD 6.0 x86 and have everything simply WORK with the famed reliability I'm used to.

12 gauge sounds interesting with one problem: no Second Amendment here I'll have to find alternative creative methods of resolving this issue..

I know it's tough to make suggestions especially when I'm caught in a corner, but they're still welcome if you can think of any.

I know it's not exactly FreeBSD... but why not give OpenDarwin a shot? Anyway, I'd argue the case for PPC, but I'm too tired to dig up interesting information.

In most cases, the answer is to use the system the way it was designed to be used. The mac is made to be used out of the box with supported software. It's really the same as a windoze system. Use it as intended and you can be happy.

So use it for a graphics rendering system. Use it for your web browsing so your "work" work station is safe from evil web hacks. You can use it for lots and lots of things. Heck, you could even use it for the world's most expensive digital picture frame.

Daniel

Yeah that's what I figured. But getting any reasonable use out of it with OSX Tiger would mean upgrading it to 1GB and I'm loathe to throw good money after bad. Digital photo frame sounds interesting since otherwise it will just sit here and be a liability.

Either that or I'll bite the big bullet and sell it at a disproportionate loss.

donate it to a good cause and write it off.some school would love to have it.

exactly what is the problem loading freebsd on it? I haven't actually tried to load any other unix variant on an OSX capable mac since OSX came out, as I just use that. But you're right things under the hood are slightly different. Most importantly and probably most frustrating to you is the patching of the various text configuration files with the "NetInfo" system. All the C calls that would have returned info from the files, are patched to now first look in the netinfo database. So in most cases adding things to the /etc files doesn't actually do anything. But the files are all still there, they now contain a message telling you to go look in the netinfo manager.

I have loaded FreeBSD on many older macs, it's always been wonderfully supported on PPC machines. Has is not kept up? or are you just not finding the right distributions?

Some issues with first the partitioning, then the boot loader, then the installer crashing.. lots of problems. I eventually traced it to the 10.4 upgrade, they do stuff to the partitions that gives the installer fits. FreeBSD PPC is beta software, and it is known not to work in some key areas. Eventually, it cost me so many hours trying to get everything sorted out that I just gave up and now it's for sale on ebay..

I've relied on FreeBSD for the better part of the decade and I really like the x86 version, so I'm going to switch back to it.