Re: running FreeBSD on an iMac - solved - well sorta

On Wed, 21 Dec 2022, doug@safeport.com wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, 20 Dec 2022, Doug Denault wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 20 Dec 2022, Mike Clarke wrote:
>> 
>>> On Tuesday, 20 December 2022 16:37:16 GMT Doug Denault wrote:
>>> 
>>> > freebsd-update will not attempt 9.2 --> 12.3. Any way to get 10.x or 
>>> 11.x
>>> 
>>> > to see if that will update? Google has not, so far, turned up any 10 or 
>>> 11
>>> 
>>> > CDs in the wild.
>>> 
>>> http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/ISO-IMAGES/
>> 
>> Thank you
>
> I really appreciated the feed back. It turned out what I needed was a 700MB 
> cd. That does not match the media that the 9.2 image was written on but using 
> cdrecord from cdrtools version 2022.09.18 (the current version from pkg) 
> worked fine using the bootonly image. Now onto Xorg. Should be easy right :)

I did install 12.3, Xorg (zero issues), xfce and firefox. All that works
perfectly except cut and paste. It turns out there is a community of
people doing what I am trying to do. These are great systems even if Apple
will no longer update them. There is even a FreeBSD wiki. It turns out that
there seems to be a way to install FreeBSD as the native OS without
completely wiping the disk as I did.

I am not sure why cut and paste seems to depend on the BIOS which is really
gone. The Apple method of booting to the BIOS does not work so I assume
some part of it (the BIOS) are physically on the hard drive.

I have tried the native xfce clipboard app and an X11 based app getting
neither to work. Again this is me begging for ideas. My neighbor found his
installation CD so I can put OS/X back and do this the "right" to see what
happens. But if there is a way to cut and paste I have no need to do this.