Ardour and the Motu 1224 (hey, it was free!!)

Ok, I’m aware that MOTU are not the most open-source friendly audio vendor’s out there but I have this 1224 that I feel is going to waste…

What I’d like to do is use it with Ardour. I did some searching around on this site and I don’t see any specific mentions of the 1224 so I’m not sure that’s even possible.

Here’s the rub…and it’s a biggie (I think):
I’d like to dual-boot some flavor of linux with Mac OS 9. I say “some flavor” as I swear I heard a colleague of mine mention that Ubuntu isn’t PowerPC compatible. (Actually, there’s probably some cut-off, I’d imagine…as in, “Gutsy(??) and up will most definitely NOT work on a PowerPC processor”).

I’m a programmer who uses 8.10 all day at work and “for play” at home. Big fan, in fact.

Anyway, it’d be a real shame not to put this 1224 to good use.

So, is it possible to dual boot Mac OS 9 and [whateverLinuxFlavor] on a PowerPC processor (that’s only 300mhz)?

Would I have to use freebob? (Since it is indeed a Firewire audio device).

So many questions…so little time. Thanks for any input!

-Aaron

AHA! 6.06 is the last official PowerPC supporting distro!

Found it here: http://ubuntu-releases.cs.umn.edu/6.06/

How is Ardour with 6.06?

Anything I should be worried about?

Will a dual-boot situation work here?

I think I’m gonna need some RAM…

The main problem with Ardour and 6.06 will be the dependencies : http://ardour.org/building
You’ll probably have to build recent versions of a number of libs.

Why not use some other distro that supports PPC, like openSUSE: http://software.opensuse.org/ or Fedora: http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-ppc

… and you won’t get your MOTU to work it seams:
“MOTU have been hostile to the idea of Linux driver development for their FireWire products” (http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/List_of_Supported_Devices)

The only supported devices seems to be Traveler and 828mkII (http://www.ffado.org/?q=devicesupport/list&page=2)