Or how I finally broke down and bought that MkLinux book after all these decades. When I did own a PowerPC Mac as my daily driver it was an iMac back in 1999 and I ran OS X Server. I later bought a G4 to only find out that OS X didn’t support the G4. Linux had issues too and I ended up running OpenBSD on the G4. Which was fun, although for the ‘work at home’ bit, I ended up needing Windows NT 4.0, so I ran that in OS 8 on SoftPC. Yay.
I didn’t have any luck with Linux on Power as MkLinux wanted the beige hardware, and by the time I felt like digging in again to Linux, OS X had finally been ported to the G4 Sawtooth’s so it really didn’t matter.
I’d seen this book in a store but it was pretty expensive, and geared to such a tiny market. Although Mach does compile on the i386, why they didn’t include it was well to push Mach/Linux as a platform well that’s beyond me. Then again looking at the stunning success of Darwin on i386/x86_64 I guess the reality is, why bother.
I ordered this on Ebay, for the usual $5 plus $10 to ship, and it just showed up today! What mysteries lie on the CD-ROMs? I know others have posted stuff, but I wanted to hold them in my hands myself.
I didn’t know if the CD-ROM’s were included, and I first thought I got lucky: not only were they included, neither had been opened up before! These CD’s had been packed way like this for the last 22.5 years! Now for the bad part.
See that stupid leaflet in the back? Yeah well it turns out that it was a really stupid idea. No doubt this thing sat in the bottom of a stack for decades where the ink had been pressed for so long against the disk that it has transferred to the surface.
HOW ANNOYING.
So yes, they actually advertise the book, namely the one that I had bought with some crap ink leaflet in the CD-ROM pouch and it’s transferred to the disc.
Sigh.
I tried rubbing alcohol but that had no effect. I tried rubbing with a credit card, and it got a little off, but I fear I’m just going to damage the surface more.
I can only imagine what other CD-ROM’s out there that haven’t been archived are sitting under hundreds or thousands of pounds of book weight having nonsense imprinted onto them.
At least the second CD-ROM doesn’t suffer this defect and I’ll be uploading it later.
No book review yet, I’m just sitting here with this impacted CD.
UPDATE
Thanks to Shawn Novak for uploading the R3 images so I can at least pull up the compatible machines:
The latest Qemu can pull it the image fine, however trying to boot up looks like the Mach kernel just isn’t compatible enough with the emulated Mac99 machine (which isn’t surprising).
I’ll need to mess with stuff to see if the G3beige can boot Linux on Qemu, and if the BootX (I think it’s bootx?) can load the mach kernel.
Try one of those “CD repair kits”. Sanding it down with finest sandpaper and then polishing it.
Yup, my first thought was to use one of those “disc doctor” sanding wheels. Pretty sure that would do the trick.
Yep.
I’ve got something like the following and am quite happy with it.
https://www.amazon.com/SkipDr-Manual-Disc-Repair-System/dp/B0015ACUKC
The problem is that nobody uses physical media anymore. I went through the computer malls and even the trash sellers and came up with nothing.
I’m probably going to have to order some Chinese shit sold in America and shipped back here. I didn’t find crap on Aliexpress.
I have a copy of this book and should have images of both of the discs, will check if they’re the same versions.
Well good news and bad news. I do have images of my discs and I was even able to find what shelf the book was hiding on to scan them. The bad news, if you can call it that, is that my book had an updated release with it, DR3 isntead of DR 2.1.
https://archive.org/details/mklinuxforpowermacintoshdr3primetimefreewarejuly1998
I think the PTF Reference disc is the same as yours so I didn’t upload it, but just in case the sha1sum of my image is 326d34bd0d9979036d27a169d6b09318a4222cc2
The volume name is “PTF Ref. 1.0”, using the Disktool to grab it, it’s SHA-1 is 13902fb567dc8e0a2800aacf585023a6c80c12a6.
Hmm, guess I’ll upload mine then and post the link when it’s done, you can grab it and compare. Label printed on the disc is the same as is the HFS volume label, newest files are dated early February. Maybe a minor update or something. *shrugs*
Here ya go: https://archive.org/details/mklinuxptfreferencedisc10
Thanks! Sorry today my iMac G5 greeted me with a flashing disk icon.
I probably need to buy a new reader for my PC.
Isopropyl alcohol should clean it up without using anything more drastic.
Duh, or, as I just read from your post, it won’t….
Yeah. I even let it bathe for a few hours. Nothing.
It’s really been impacted for 22 years….
This ink is maybe not soluble in alcohol. Try water if it’s a water based ink.
Since book is not damaged by any liquid, I would guess it was probably stored in humid and hot warehouse so it would be a good idea to try warm water (unless it was stored in a volcano, you can expect 50°C water to do the trick).
There is also a possibility that hydrocarbon liquids may dissolve the ink so something like petrol/gas or WD-40 may work as well but I never tried on CD so I don’t know if it will damage disc itself.
Alcohol and water had no effect. I took a spudger to it and got most of it off. Naturally it musnt be enough as none of my readers can read it.
So annoying.
A cheap ultrasonic cleaner might also help.