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A new crazy project?
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Cylinsier
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 4:47 pm    Post subject: A new crazy project? Reply with quote

I have a couple external hard drives laying around that I was kind of using for backup until I got my network drive, and now they don't serve much of a purpose. So I'm thinking about partitioning the hell out of them and seeing how many different operating systems I can have to boot from. I'm considering seeing if I can install the following OSs on the HDs and get them to boot:

Mac OS X

Linux (Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu, maybe Yellow Dog)

ReactOS

maybe Solaris

And perhaps a couple netbook OSs just to be really abnormal.

I have no idea if I will be able to do any of this; I know for a fact some OSs will not boot from an external HD, so that may be a problem. I also have no idea how netbook OSs try to behave on something besides a netbook.

Updated. My current official list of OS goals:

OSX 10.6 ... in progress
Chromium OS ... in progress
Ubuntu ... in progress
Solaris
ReactOS
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Last edited by Cylinsier on Fri Dec 04, 2009 10:44 pm; edited 2 times in total
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 4:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That sounds like... well, fun for the craft aspect... but completely useless for any other reason Smile
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Cylinsier
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 4:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, ultimately, I will probably boot into Mac OS X once a week or so to tool around with garage band and I might boot into one of the Linux distros for kicks once a month or so...and the rest will be used once to prove it works and never touched again. Still, it presents a challenge; I will probably pursue it.
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 4:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

About once a year I install the latest ubuntu release on my old dell and play around with it... functionally worthless for an every day computer... but when I actually get a piece of software to work, I give myself mad props Smile

Most annoying thing is no wireless card on the dell, so I gotta break out the 20 ft CAT5 and play turn of the century with it... plugging it in, and all
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Cylinsier
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 10:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Got one of the hard drives wiped and partitioned. I'm going to start with OSX because that one is going to be the hardest to get working.

Here's the plan:

OSX 10.6
Debian
Ubuntu
Fedora
Yellow Dog
Solaris
ReactOS
Easy Peasy
Jolicloud
???
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 10:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's pimp... How different are all those linux distros from each other? From an end user experience
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 11:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not especially. Laughing I plan to mix it up as to which ones I do GNOME with and which ones I do KDE with since a lot of them seem to let you choose.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 8:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I got my other drive all partitioned out, but I didn't realize there was a limit on the # of disk partitions, so I might have to cut my list of OS choices short by one or two. Still starting from the top; going to make an attempt at getting Snow Leopard running now.

For those that don't know: Snow Leopard isn't built to run on just any hardware, so this will probably be a laborious task.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 10:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Unsurprisingly, ran into the first hitch on SL; couldn't get past the boot menu. Will have to toy around with altering the boot ISO to see if I can get something functional.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 10:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What exactly IS the mechanism in the disk image that doesn't let SL be installed on any clean hard drive?
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 10:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Its basically Apple wanting to make sure they can continue to charge absurd prices for their machines by making a lot of the hardware proprietary. Thus, OSX only cooperates with specific video cards and a proprietary type of bios and file system. Basically, they don't want you to be able to buy any old machine and run OSX on it. They want you to buy a Mac if you want to run OSX.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 10:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, i know what their motivation is... I was just wondering what the software nugget was that actually prevented it from being installed on a bunch of different hardware...

On a side note... I was playing with that old laptop last night and realized that when I first got it, I had automatic updates turned off... and since I never used it, I had the ORIGINAL version of xp installed... had to download and install a bunch of junk, THEN service pack 2... then some more junk... THEN service pack 3...

That thing's an antique! Runs like a champ, though...

I only got to mess with boxee for about 30 seconds this morning... not impressed, but I hope that there is a lot more to find that I missed just clicking around.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 10:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, I rescued an old PC for someone a few months ago and it had XP SP1 on it. Spent like 2 hours getting it up to speed.

For OSX, its just stuff in the kernal that says, "run this os on this hardware." There are several major web forums out there dedicated to finding ways around that, and a lot of them have been successful.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 10:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alright, it was clear that my machine wasn't going to boot right from the disk, which isn't a surprise, so I had to enlist the aid of a bootloader.

Found a free one and burnt to CD. FAIL. Thing kept giving me a memory allocation error. So I found the blog of the guy that designed it and luckily my problem was pretty common and he had already created a patched version for people with mobos like mine.

Downloaded patched version, burnt to (my last)CD, and voila. Boot loader success. From there, I was able to switch disks and launch osx10.6 but many many kexts then failed to load and the kernal went into panic mode. I think my osx distro might be a little screwed up so I'm going to have to try another one. Luckily I still have a whole spool of dvds.
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 11:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

After reading this, I'm dedicated to redoubling my efforts to get osx working on my pc:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/snow-leopard-update-blocks-intel-atom-kills-hackintoshes/
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