On Wed, 12 Jan 2000, Roger Brown wrote:

> My assumptions are...
>=20
> 1. mklinux has IDE support, is this true?

Yes.  Fairly decent support, too.  Stole it from NetBSD a year or so ago.=
=20
You should be able to borrow the changes back almost as-is, I would think,
and it should work on the Q630.  According to my limited info, the Q630
had the same basic IDE hardware as the pre-PCI PowerBooks.  If not, then
no idea.


> 2. Porting NetBSD driver code to linux is non-trivial.

Well, with MkLinux it _is_ trivial, but that's because all the drivers are
in Mach, and Mach and BSD used to be much more closely linked together
than they are now.  Long story.


> Possible solutions are as follows...
>=20
> 1. Take the hardware knowledge derived from NetBSD/mac68k LC 630 support =
and
> hence add Performa 6200 support to mklinux.

Working on it.  Had some booter issues, think they may be resolved now,
just by going back to an older booter (weird).


> 2. Somehow create an OpenFirmware booter as a MacOS application that coul=
d
> start either linuxppc or NetBSD/macppc. (by that I mean have a MacOS
> application that adds a lump of code into memory that emulates the
> OpenFirmware ROMs).

Kind of like BootX, you mean?  Just add NetBSD support to it.  No point in
writing a new booter....  ;-)


> On reflection the MacOS psuedo-OpenFirmware booter looks the most elegant
> solution, but adding support the 'hard' way to mklinux looks like the
> quickest solution.=20
>=20
> I have an external 500Mb SCSI drive so IDE is not initially an issue.

Ironically, MkLinux will initially support IDE, but not the 5380 scsi chip
(I haven't finished that driver port...).


> Do any of the ports include support for a PDS Ethernet card (I have an
> Asant=E9 ethernet card in the 6200)?

NetBSD could, MkLinux can't because of a bone-headed VM implementation.
Perhaps after the move to Darwin Mach....  :-|


> How far does the 6200 currently get on bootup of mklinux?

The best was about 20 lines, I believe.


> Why is it that mklinux works on the Peforma 6360?

That's an obscure numbering error on Apple's part.  The 6360, unlike all
the other 63xx machines, is actually a PCI machine based on... I believe
the 6400 motherboard design.


> Is it true that non of the PPC ports rely on any 68000 emulation from ROM=
?

Correct.


Later,
David