Re: dzinstall 1.0.40
On Tue, 14 Sep 1999, Matt Porter wrote:
> > The powerpc boot floppies don't build nicely, and it's pretty fruitless
> > trying to boot some PowerMacs off floppies anyway, due to hardware bugs
> > and limitations. I think I'll stick to i386 and sparc. Almost by
> > definition, you ought to be able to do a completely automated install on a
> > sparc box, just by typing boot net at the firmware prompt. On PCs, you
> > have a lot more trouble "detecting" hardware.
>
> Interesting, considering that powerpc boot-floppies build right out of
> CVS for PReP. We can install completely from tftp/NFS or from CD now. I
> don't know what the big problem is for pmac since general support for that
> subarch is a lot more mature than what I am working with.
Well, they break dreadfully for pmac. The library stripping process
doesn't seem to work (get SEGVs for everything). This means I can't
install a working Debian on my systems and get a kernel stable enough to
build the boot floppies without collapsing under the stress as 2.1.24 is
wont to do. I'm now investigating the possibilities of crosscompiling the
things on one of the 20 or so idle P450s which are an order of magnitude
faster than my PowerMacs.
> Who are the pmac developers out there? I'm wondering if I need to set up
> the Starmax I have available at work and do the work (even though I've
> hardly even touched a Mac before). I feel like nobody with Mac know-how
> is interested in boot-floppies development.
Probably because it's a waste of time with the current model. For a start,
you have to find a machine whose firmware can see the floppy drive (this
rules out G3s, and maybe iMacs) and can read it reliably (this rules out
most models before 1997). On top of this you have the problems of
modifying the firmware to read some named kernel image off a floppy (which
means having MacOS (not an option for some) or having a Mac printer cable
to use the serial port, etc, etc - not something a newbie is going to be
about to do to her beloved Mac.
If we're going to do boot floppies for PowerMac at all, we should actually
use a standard Mac booter rather than having the firmware try to load a
file from an HFS partition. Benjamin Herrenschmidt has the beginnings of
such a system going (called miBoot or something).
PowerMacs also suffer from the same problem as Sparcs vis-a-vis ejecting
the boot floppy to allow one to insert the root floppy.
Mk
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