On Mon, Jun 19, 2000 at 01:51:34PM -0700, glenbo wrote:
> Hi, I'm wondering if I can get a more authoritative reason for the 7200/90
> being unsupported than 'PPC601' which is listed on your NetBSD/macppc
> Model Support page. I really like netbsd, and currently use the mac68k
> port on my Centris 650. I'd love to get it running on my 7200/90 as well.

As others have said, we don't support PowerPC 601s. For what it's
worth, I swapped the motherboard in my 7200/90 for a 7500 one years
ago (and have since gone through a 601 and 604, and now have a G3
daughtercard), and it all works fine and wasn't all that expensive.

The *reason*, as near as I can tell, that the 601 is not supported as
that there exist two machines from Apple with the PCI architecture
(and, thus, OpenFirmware, which NetBSD/macppc uses to bootstrap the
kernel in) and with 601s: the 7200 and 7500. And the 7500's
daughterboard can be swapped for a 603e for about $20 if you look hard
enough these days.

All the other 601s are Nubus macs, meaning no OpenFirmware, meaning a
much tougher time booting (unless we go the mac68k route, booting from
MacOS, which is a theoretically possibility but apparently not
appetizing enough to be done... yet).

I'm not up on how different the 601 is from its later cousins... it's
obviously related, but clearly distant enough to make it not possible
to just use what we've got. And since we support only OF machines, and
the 7200 is the only OF machine stuck with a 601, it just isn't
supported. Yet.

Feel free to help out. :^>

       ~ g r @ eclipsed.net