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On Sat, Feb 28, 2004 at 10:37:03AM -0500, Joey C wrote:
> 	I have a Macintosh Performa 6300CD.  I understand that the Performa 6300=
CD is=20
> different from other Performas and is not currently supported.  Is there =
a=20
> time when it will be supported?  If so, when?  I'd really like to get Net=
BSD=20
> on my mac.  Thank you very much for your help.

Does the 6300 have a PowerPC 601 processor?

Does the 6300 have a PCI bus?

If it has a 601 and a PCI bus (as the 7200 series does), then only
601 processor support is necessary. I've got a 7200 motherboard (and
a few spare 7500 form factor cases) that I haven't gotten around to
playing with, on which I'd like to work on 601 support. Since I
haven't started, and haven't ever written processor support for
NetBSD, that's a long way off if I'm your only hope (and I haven't
heard anyone else clamoring to write 601 support, though I'd be
pleased to hear anything to the contrary).

If it has a 601 and a Nubus, rather than PCI, bus, as with the 6100,
7100, and 8100, then you've got even longer to wait, since
port-macppc relies heavily on the PCI architecture in order to
initialize devices. Given 601 support (which we don't have) it would
be theoretically simple to make 601-and-Nubus machines work by way
of merging port-mac68k boot code with port-macppc processor code
(probably implying a separate port), but it's really not practical
to start on that port without 601 support (since there are no
PowerPC systems with Nubus and with anything other than a 601).

Unfortunately, in the latter case, even lending your 6300CD to a
more experienced developer than I won't do a lot of good, since it's
awfully hard to work on processor support if you don't even have a
framework in which to operate.

As a side note, those 601-and-Nubus machines are sort of the missing
link between NetBSD and a port-mac that supports all Macintosh
computers, Power- or otherwise. It's not clear that that would be a
desireable decision from a codebase point of view, though I expect it
would be from a "marketing" point of view. The 7200 series is the
obvious starting point here, since it has a PCI bus and a 601
processor.

If someone'd like to pay me to do this, and pay me as much as or
more than I'm making now as a senior Unix systems administrator,
I'd leave my current job in a heartbeat. That's also not very
likely: there isn't much of a business advantage to be had here,
and even folks like Wasabi have to be somewhat concerned with making
money. Trouble is that 601-and-Nubus is a totally orphaned
architecture.

If you'll settle for "something Unixy", at least for now, whatever
has inherited the MkLinux code (Yellow Dog, maybe?) should boot on
that machine.

--=20
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

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