Okay, I’m irritated. Doesn’t help that I’m in DC, still working at 7:20 in the evening, having caught the 7:55am flight down here. I’m irritated at Apple.
We have a server with PPC chips (Apple XServe, slot loading). It needs a new OS. In the several years since this machine came out, there have been a few changes to the Apple line. These include:
* The OS now comes on DVDs, not CDs. This machine has only a CD drive.
* Back in the day, these machines did not come with any video options onboard. You could buy a “PCI-X” video card … but that was it. We do not have a “PCI-X” video card … and no, you can’t just jam a regular $20 PCI video card in there backwards. Trust me on this.
* Apples are now Intel based, not PPC based.
* They changed the boot code so that if you make a bootable image on a new machine (my laptop), it ain’t gonna work on the old server. This means that I can no longer just “pretend” install on my laptop onto the target mode-ed server … since they’re different architectures using different boot codes.
I’ve done this more than twice, and it’s almost always different in some unique and awesome way. I’ll spare the details, but the solution that we’re closing in on here involves a firewire disk, a spare PPC workstation, two different machines in target mode, and a lot of profanity. I really want to get the serial / USB adapter involved somehow … but I’m not sure it’s going to be necessary.
Oh yeah, and in between cursing at the machines, I had a decent set of conversations about health insurance with my employer. I’ll leave out the details, but let’s just say that these weren’t the conversations that leave one in a *better* mood than one started.
Thank God I’m in the same town as a Dogfish Head brewpub.
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