zlacker

[parent] [thread] 0 comments
1. alexwa+(OP)[view] [source] 2023-03-05 06:38:02
I had a PowerMac 6500/300 back in my mid-teens as my first computer.

To play games I later bought a PC Voodoo 3 which you could flash with a Mac-version ROM. Much cheaper than buying an actual Max version.

Unreal was incredible. The whole card was incredible.

Later I put a Linux distro on the computer too, and I needed a custom patch to the kernel (2.2.18, I think) to get the Voodoo drivers working for accelerated 2D and 3D rather than the software frame buffer. It was incredible to see a Gnome 1.4 or KDE 2 desktop in high res perform really well.

It was also pretty buggy. Due to experimental drivers in both Linux and Mac, I assume. The weirdest was that sometimes a bug in Linux would dump whatever was in memory on the screen, which softly after booting from Mac to Linux could result in Mac OS 9 windows appearing on a Linux desktop. You obviously couldn’t interact, it would happen in a kernel panic type event where the computer would freeze with an odd mix of stuff on the screen.

Was a fun intro to Linux, not getting a nice windowing environment till after I’d learnt to patch and compile a kernel.

Back then it was normal to play with more OSs it seems like. That computer had Mac, Linux, BeOS and more on it.

[go to top]