Re: can NetBSD work on Power Macintosh 6100?

[Robert Swindells <rjs%fdy2.demon.co.uk@localhost>]

Michael <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
>On Nov 4, 2008, at 8:25 AM, Havard Eidnes wrote:
>>> Hi everyone,
>>> someone donated me a very old Power Macintosh,
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_6100
>>> I know it's completely useless but i was wondering if it is possible
>>> to install there any version of NetBSD or MkLinux just to play with
>>> it.
>>> I'm also interested in learning about porting NetBSDand low level os
>>> programming.
>>> thanks,
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> according to the macppc model support page we maintain (linked
>> from the macppc port page) at
>>
>>  http://www.netbsd.org/ports/macppc/models.html
>>
>> the 6100 unfortunately falls into the "we don't support it
>> because it does not use OpenFirmware" category.  That's at least
>> unlikely to change in the short term (and I'm not aware of anyone
>> working to fix it).

>It also falls into the "we don't support it because it's a NuBus box"  
>category.

We have NuBus code for mac68k.

>> As for other OS variants and whether they support it, I'll have
>> to say "pass".

>IIRC MkLinux is the only free unixish OS that supports it.

I tried booting MkLinux on one a few years ago, it didn't get very
var IIRC. My 6100 doesn't seem to want to talk to the display now
so I can't check.

>In other news - we do have 601 support for quite some time now, the  
>chipset in these Macs should be rather similar to those used in some  
>Quadras - what's missing is a boot loader that works on PowerPCs.  
>Didn't someone work on NuBus PowerMac support a while ago?

As well as MkLinux there is supposed to be support for NuBus PowerMacs
in the Linux/PPC tree <http://nubus-pmac.sourceforge.net/>.

The BootX bootloader for Linux/PPC is available with source, so could
be extended to boot NetBSD too. The first task would probably be to
make it build using MPW.

I haven't tracked down the source to the MkLinux Booter so don't know
if it would be better.

Robert Swindells