Call me crazy, but I have Etch up and running on my trusty old Powerbook 3400 using quik to boot it. Sometimes it shuts down a few times before booting, but it always starts eventually. That is a minor annoyance. The main problem I have is no sound on cd's. I've tried several players..xmcd and xmms with the appropriate plugin to name two. The player plays the cd but no sound comes out. I checked all over the place and I got as far as modprobe on dmasound_pmac and it comes back with this error.FATAL: Error inserting dmasound_pmac (/lib/modules/2.6.15-1-powerpc/kernel/sound/oss/dmasound/dmasound_pmac.ko): No such device
I go to the aforementioned directory and the file is there. Very annoying. I can use asla to play wav files so the sound is installed. I am about to the point of seeing just how many times this laptop will skip across the parking lot when thrown from a second story window. Almost. Can somebody help this mad wizard get sound from his cd?

would you post here how you installed debian on pb3400?
I have a pb3400c that I've made some unsucessfull attempts at installing netbsd earlier and now just sitting idly on my shelf.

I've seen several posts in different parts of the forum on attempting/wanting to install *nix on pb3400c but I think this is the first time I've read someone who have installed it, although sounds like you're facing some problems!

cheers

hi, i am glad to see the powerbook3400 linux users
here and interest in more.

i have had debian sarge and etch running on mine with
80MB RAM, using window maker and openbox. tried ede
built from sources but althought the library tested
out the desktop stuff did not work right in sarge.
am going to try again in etch when i get a chance.

i think, was the cd sound problem taken care of just
recently ? well i have seen postings about people
working on it so if not it should be soon. please
if you are running etch do test and report bugs
now being aware that it is in prerelease ...

re: how i installed was from sarge business iso.
it is small so even if you have little disk space
no problem. you need a decent internet connection, and
i mean best some sort of dsl or cable. i used
a wireless pcmcia card and got an open link, it
took about 1 hour to download and install the base
system. then you can pick packages at your leisure
after that. of course you also need a burner of some
kind -- i found a used scsi burner for $10, locally.

to boot the pb3400 initially i used a small macos partition. you have to have some way to partion your
disk, for me that meant another used scsi thing
backup drive... then get bootx and use that to
boot the installer. that macos partion or somewhere
you need to (maybe standard hfs) copy the initrd and
vmlinux back up to macos, mounting the mac partition.
its a bit tangle up there. if you want to use
quik bootloader that works too, i use both, there
are times one is preferable to the other. a good
webpage for info about bootloaders in linuxppc.

if you get that far, upgradeing to etch is not hard,
that is the upcoming release although you must
avoid the 2.6.16 default kernel presently, choosing
the 15 has work for me. this is going to be dated
probably pretty soon, but it is caution now. if you
save your 2.6.8 from sarge you can still boot etch
with that (at least at present) in case of emergency.
also for etch is bigger, if you have the smaller disk,
you may find you need a bigger one, or something.
also i had to fool with the initramfs tools to get
a reasonable initrd which is not really produced
by default yet (there is another transition in etch)...

i also use a pcmcia card reader where i backup my
personal files and transfer them with another laptop.

hope this summary/ survey helps.