OK, so I got my hands on a non-functional Wallstreet powerbook G3. When I first saw it, it was sitting next to a jar full of screws and the display was partially removed, giving me an idea of the amount of work I had in store if I wanted to be able to use the thing. Being that my current laptop situation was a 233 MHz Pentium (note the lack of any number next to that last word) I was really hoping to be able to make this thing go.
Pressing the button on the battery lit up 2 of the 4 leds, indicating that it had some charge. I anxiously pressed the power button...and again...and again...and then finally gave up on my hopes that it would "just work". After all - why would someone throw out a working powerbook?
After finding an article describing how to reset the PMU (power management unit - the Mac equivalent of APM) I took the unit to my father's house and borrowed my step-mom's AC adapter and plugged it in. Nothing, again. I was pretty depressed now. I took the unit complerely apart and put it back together to make sure everything was connecting properly. It was (much to my disappointment), but just to make sure, I reconnected the power supply and tried again.
"BONGGGGGG" it said! I jumped for joy - my powerbook was only partially dead! I tried on battery again - no luck. So, I ordered a new battery board and a power supply from an internet dealer. When the parts arrived, I wasted no time installing the new battery board. Unfortunately, the unit still wouldn't recognize the battery had charge, nor would it use the battery. :(
In the meantime, I was enjoying using the powerbook even though it had to be plugged in all the time (I'm pretty used to using laptops with no batteries, having scrounged laptops for a number of years). I decided to format the hard drive and install Yellow Dog Linux on it. 2.3 was the latest release at the time, so I downloaded the ISO (I know...I should pay for it..really, I will, someday) and burned it.
Unfortunately, that's as far as I got. I couldn't boot the install CD! Booted while holding down 'C' - that didn't do it. Selected the CD-ROM in 'Startup Disk' - that didn't do it. Even tried booting the CD from Open Firmware. Zip - zilch - nadda! Man, was this 'book frustrating. Finally, I realized what none of the documentation told me: This was an oldworld Mac. In case you don't know what that means, it has to do with where the boot ROM is stored in the machine - either in actual ROM or on the hard disk. In my case, the ROM was real ROM still (I forgot how old this machine was).
I've run Yellow Dog on an oldworld machine before - a Powermac 7500. I even got it booting without the MacOS (i.e., directly from open firmware) after great frustration. So, I fired up BootX and viola: I was installing Linux on this old 'book. The wallstreet has a weird video configuration, apparently, and YDL tells you some command line parameters to enter to make the video start up properly (too bad they didn't tell me to use BootX on this 'book - would have saved me an entire day's frustration). I entered those and the X11 installer fired up properly. Click, click, click...select packages...wait 3 hours (damn laptop CD drives)...boom, we're done.
Reboot, select 'Linux' in bootX, watch the stupid interactive startup, watch X get hosed when it starts, more cussing. I don't get it - why did X start perfectly for the installer but not when the system boots? FInally getting X to work involved a gut-wrenching wrestling match with XFree86-4's rewrite of XF86Config - a program whose name I can't remember and I can't find on my laptop anymore (this should be a note to X developers: make this program more visible - it is CRUCIAL to properly configuring X4).