Nightmare of Media

I have an old PowerBook 17" that I still use to run old Mac software on, because some software does still run on a Intel chip, ie. my scanner software for Canon Scanner.

I been using openSUSE on AMD and INTEL Chips since 5.3. I have only use openSUSE on PowerPC, back at 7.3 (Ran really nice on my G3), but I haven't messed to much with openSUSE on PowerPC until 11.0 and it wasn't nice, it fail everytime because it couldn't find the DVD.

Well, I put to the side because work keeps me busy, that I didn't even think about putting any linux on that laptop, until 11.1 came out.

I downloaded the DVD and burn on a DVD+R forgetting that Powerbook's only like to read DVD-R, which is a pain, but hey that Apple for you.

I spent $15 bucks for a stack of Memorex, and that's where the nightmare began. I should have remember back days of making mix tapes. I have never had luck with Memorex media.

I had burn the iso in Mac OS X with disc manager reboot the Powerbook in openSUSE began to install. It booted up with no problem but when I began to install I notice that it took forever to install. I mean forever. Since having a family I went to do family things, came back four hours later to see that it had fail install X. Ok, no problem. I will just try re-install. Which I did only to have it fail again on another package.

At this point I was thinking that it was the Mac. So I copied to my main server running openSUSE 11.1, fired up K3B and burn another disc on the same Memorex media. Again, after waiting for another 4 hours, it failed at some package only in the first 25% of the install.

Now after three failed install I am starting to think I got a bad iso. Let me do a checksum to make sure, it checks out. So let me download yet another one. Waiting on the iso to download, I grabbed one of my Sony DVD-RW to see if I had two bad burners. Most my equipment is older than my five year old son.

I took the disc I just burned compared it to the other two and noticed that the Memorex didn't burn good. I know bad English, but you could look at the disc and see that the disc was not right.

Taking the Memorex throwing the cross my home office like ninja stars, with my son thinking that the coolest thing since Legos (Now, I am having to stop him from throwing his DVD's the same way).I took the Sony popped in and crossed my fingers, curse out loud things that most five years shouldn't heard because the are parrots with those word and began to do install number 4.

To make sure I didn't go crazy I when to living room and sat with my son and watch Legion of Superheroes. After an hour I came back into the room to find openSUSE 11.1 installed. No issues. Which really reminded me that not all media is the same.

To this date, I will stand by the cheapest DVD I can buy at Microcenter and that is Windat. So if you are having issue with an issue, step back. It might not be your iso. It might be your media.