on 8/13/00 4:41 PM, Carolyn Jane Gillis at cjgillis@chorus.net wrote
something like:

>>> Is anyone trying to get NetBSD up on an Mac 6100/66 PPC? Is the problem the
>>> 601 chip, or the small hard drive, or the lack of a CD Rom drive? It would
>>> be a shame a to throw away or sell my old Mac 6100, if all it took was
>>> patience to be able to be able to dedicate it to Net BSD or Linux.
>>
>> hello, from what I understand from
>> http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/models.html,
>> 6100 is not supported because of boot ROM difference (no open firmware).

    Actually there are three major problems: (listed in the order they need
to be fixed before it'll work)

1.) as you mentioned, the 601 CPU support has not been added. I don't recall
exactly why it hasn't been added, the info is out there, just no one has
done it yet. [or taken it from MkLinux/LinuxPPC]

2.) As the reply mentioned, it has no OpenFirmware to boot a kernel with at
the ROM level. This means we have to boot MacOS and then use a program Like
(a modified version of) BootX to load a *BSD kernel into RAM and execute it.
(This could also be done, just hasn't yet) [or taken from MkLinux/LinuxPPC]


3.) It has NuBus instead of PCI. At this time, macppc doesn't have NuBus
support. I was looking at the NuBus source code from the Mac68k port this
afternoon, (I've got a 6100/60 myself) wondering if all it needs to be is
copied over. Although I don't think this is the case, IIRC there were some
modifications to the NuBus controllers between 68k models prior to Quadra
660 and 840AV, and PowerPC models; but I could be wrong. [This could also be
taken from MkLinux]

    At this point, your best bet is probably MkLinux. I have a 6100 here to
volunteer and possibly a 7100 in the future; with a G3 to compile on, if
someone writes the code. (I wouldn't even know where to begin)
    The lack of a CDROM shouldn't hold you up as long as you can put the
machine on an Ethernet network and pull the files in from ftp or otherwise.
I think the Base NetBSD distro. should be about 150MB once installed (about
40MB in it's compressed form), if you keep your swap small, you could live
off the Quantum 250MB HD that it came with.


    Chris



So much time, so little knowledge. Anyone want to teach me PPC assembly,
C/C++, etc. etc.  =)