It arrived in good condition, just a sharpie wound on the top edge that I tastefully covered with a sticker. Once that project was completed, I decided to start in on installing Ubuntu. Unfortunately, the LiveCD wouldn’t work. It would boot up and then end with a black screen. Cock. Fortunately, the alternate-installer cd is text based, so I could use that. Ubuntu installed, let’s start up. Boot screen, and… Blackness. After spending several hours on the Google, I figure out, it’s a problem with the X windowing system’s configuration file. It has no way of working with the eMac’s built-in display. No windowing system, no UI. I had no experience editing an xorg.conf file, I don’t know what most of the settings mean. I’m barely able to edit a text file from the command line. After some more googling, I found a copy of somebody else’s xorg.conf file for an eMac, for another version of Linux. But I somehow managed to figure out which settings I need, saved the changes, and rebooted. And result! I managed to solve that problem.

But it was so slow in Ubuntu. Running Panther, the machine’s paltry 256 Mb of RAM didn’t offer much but it was able to run decently. Not so in Ubuntu. It was slooooow. The time from clicking on a menu to the menu actually being drawn was measurable in seconds. Ok, I’ll get some RAM then. 2×512 Mb sticks from OWC, $60 shipped. Not a bad deal at all. Amazingly, replacing memory in the machine is quite simple, only one screw involved. And speed was much improved. Hurray.

But after spending a few days with Ubuntu, I realized that I don’t really care for it. Despite three days effort, sound wasn’t working. There was no plausible workaround for the fact that there’s no Flash support for a PowerPC Linux machine. And that’s not all. A lot of the big selling points of Ubuntu simply haven’t caught up with PowerPC support, and might never, since it’s such a tiny sliver of an already small segment. It was time to switch back.

There was just one small problem. It didn’t come with any CDs. And since it only has a CD-ROM drive, any DVDs I had lying around wouldn’t work. I did some web searching, as there are places online where you can still buy old OSes, including Jaguar and Puma. Only problem is, they’re very price. And I’m not willing to pay $75-$130 for a dated system. Unfortunately, eBay auctions for CDs were few and far between, and frequently had bids pushing to the retail prices. Finally I found an auction for a set of eMac restore CDs. I asked the seller if they were CDs, just to be sure, and he said yes. So I bid, and won for the amazingly low cost of $35 shipped. A few days later the CDs arrived, so I eagerly put them into the plucky little eMac.

And nothing happened. The eMac refused to boot from the CD drive. Ubuntu wouldn’t even recognize that there was a CD in the drive. Did some more googling, even posted on the PPC section of the Ubuntu support forums. I put the CD in my iMac to make sure it wasn’t a bad disk. It was fine. I ejected the disk and that’s when I noticed something. On the disk it said “DVD”. Even though I had asked specifically if it was a CD and was told yes. Shit.

At this point, I made an executive decision. It would be cheaper to buy a DVD drive for the eMac than it would be to drop more money on disks. I popped down to the shops and found an ok DVD drive for $49. And it even has Lightscribe. Whatever that is. I tear apart the eMac using Wilko’s eMac teardown guide. It’s a pretty machine inside, all shiny chrome and neat parts, so I took some pictures, which will go up on the Flickr soon. Continue taking it apart… Still taking it apart. 45 screws later, I pop the new DVD drive in. 45 screws. That’s bad. Then there’s putting the whole thing together, remembering which screws go where, and so forth. When I finally put it together, I only had four screws left over, and no guarantee that the drive or machine was even going to work when I hit the power button.

Plug it in, nice spark from inside the translucent power cord, hit the power button, and it works! Put the DVD in the drive, reboot, and even that works! Amazing! So now I’ve got Panther running on the machine, a 700 Mhz G4 eMac that only cost me $205 altogether.

So that project is all finished, I sit down to see what I’ve missed in the RSS feeds, and I see this.

Cock.

I forgot to buy a coax cable. My cable input is on the opposite side of the room from my computer, a good thirty feet of distance. So I need to buy an extra long cable. Until then, I’m stuck using the included antenna, which only picks up 3ABN, a very Jesus-y channel. So I don’t have much to watch on my new tv-computer for now. Oh well.

• A Navigon GPS unit – Not technically here yet, but it should be by next Monday. Woot had these on sale the other day for 80 bucks. I’ve been wanting a GPS unit for a while, but was a little leery of the price point. Not that a good GPS unit isn’t worth $300-$400, but I’m not sure if I’d get $400 worth of use out of one. However, at a sub-$100 price point, that’s well worth it to me. And it’s even a talky kind, which is more than I was expecting at that price. I’m pretty ‘cited.
• New RAM for the eMac – I got the eMac a couple months back, and while neat and a great deal, it was kinda light on the RAM. Only 256 MB. So I finally put down a little money and got a gigabyte’s worth from OWC. And I’ll be damned, but the thing is hecka zippy after the upgrade. By the way, the upgrade was super easy, only one phillips-head screw to deal with. Now I just have to find some OSX install CDs for it (I’m watching you eBay), because my experience with Linux on it has been, shall we say, sub-par. (Seriously, no sound on it, and no chance of getting Flash working, ever. F that.)
• Super Mario Galaxy for the Nintendo Wii – I f’ing love this game. I’ve already sunk several hours into it and I’m only a tiny bit through. It’s the same basic premise as the past couple of Mario games, collecting stars. But this game has the best graphics yet, a great soundtrack, and is trippy as hell. You play on little planets, and so half the time you’re hanging upside down. When I first started I was afraid of jumping because I didn’t know if I’d fall off or not. Still, this game is fun. I’d say the best installment since Super Mario RPG for the SNES.
• No New iPhone – Which is strange I know, because it’s pretty much expected of me. Hell I do want one, I really do. Even though my current iPhone will get the version 2 software. Even though it would represent an extra $15-$20 a month on my phone bill. Even though it’s the same kind of crappy camera, and the same processor. I still want one. Faster internet is one thing, but I’m most excited at the prospect of having 16 gigs of flash memory versus my current four, and having better battery life. But, here’s the dealbreaker. There’s no 3G in Nebraska. Whatsoever. In fact, a huge majority of the country lacks AT&T’s 3G coverage. And I’m just not at all willing to pay an extra $20 per month that I’m simply not getting. F that.

  But then again, at least it’s not Rogers Wireless.

On top of that, I picked up Brain Age 2 and Assassin’s Creed today. I haven’t tried Assassin’s Creed yet; it’s a spinoff of the very cool looking console game designed for the DS as a prequel. I look forward to trying it. Brain Age is a massively popular game in Japan that is catching on here in the states. Designed by a Japanese neuroscientist to improve mental acumen, the game measures your brain’s ability to think and response using a quotient described as your “brain age”. I’ve already done my first day of Brainaging, and my brain age is a sad 44. However, through the games daily training programs (you start with three and are able to unlock more as you progress) you are supposed to improve that ability. It seems to have some affect at least, after a little bit I did become quicker at the exercises. Maybe it’ll make me smarter or something, we’ll see.

The DS is a neat device, and I think it’s proof that Nintendo remains an innovator in gaming. Sony and Microsoft may have the advantage in pure processing power, but Nintendo is able to explore what’s fun and different in gaming.