Re: Atlanta Linux Showcase - Possible Birds of a Feather Session?
On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Ray Knight wrote:
> I am located in the Atlanta area and have been involved as a volunteer
> with the Atlanta Linux Showcase for the past two years. I'll be
> volunteering again this year. The Showcase will be from October 10-14
> in Atlanta. If there are enough interested linux-mac68k
> developers/users who will be attending the Showcase, I'd like to arrange
> a Birds of a Feather meeting/code hacking session. I could supply at
> least 4 working Mac's (Quadra 950, IIfx, II ci w/DayStar '040, and IIvx)
> and could possibly arrange to borrow more for the developers to hack
> on. Debian usually has a booth at the show, perhaps we could arrange to
> display a few different models of the Mac running Debian Potato at their
> booth (or at least one). I'd like to do something to try to drum up
> some support and/or enthusiasm for the m68k effort. I'd also invite
> anyone working on the other m68k architectures as I'd like to get the
> HP9000/300 I have running Linux as well.
>
> What do you all say. Anyone interested in pursuing this with me?
That sounds like a great idea. Unfortunately, I'm nowhere near the Atlanta
area, so I couldn't really be there to help. If you need a Mac or three,
though, I might be able to ship you some. You could possibly set up some
cross-compile terminals if you want to have a hacking session, to avoid
the frustrations of slow computers. Maybe have a reverse-engineering
session, as well. :) How about getting a logic analyzer while you're
there?
For Macs, I would recommend trying to find the most diverse array of
hardware possible. That means, get a 5380 Mac as well as a 5394 and a
5396. Get a Mac with II, IIsi, IOP, Cuda, and PMU ADB. Get an IDE Mac.
Getting an AV Mac would be especially cool. Get a couple different video
styles- RBV, DAFB, Civic, etc. The nice thing is, you could actually do
this without having every Mac in existence. A nice combination would be
something like:
SE/30: This would definitely be a good idea to have around- either this or
a II/IIx/IIcx. These machines don't work well in 2.2 and could use a good
hack-fest to fix them. The SE/30 is the most portable, so that would be a
good choice. I have one that I could ship if you can't find one elsewhere.
IIci: You have one, it has RBV, if anyone cares to fix Penguin for it.
IIvx: This runs pretty well as a demo machine, but would be useful if
someone wanted to debug IIsi ADB in 2.3, since everything but ADB works
fairly well.
IIfx: The IOP makes this a worthwhile hack, especially if people are
having problems with NuBus on it. Plus, you have one.
Q950: Good machine for IOP testing as well as 5396 SCSI. If somebody wants
to write a DAFB resolution-changing driver, that would be a good test
machine. But it's so darn huge. :(
Q840AV: There's lots of fancy stuff, e.g. MACE, Civic FB, DSP, Sound,
etc, that could be hacked for m68k Linux. The AV Macs are probably the
most interesting hardware challenge remaining. The 660AV would also work,
but the NuBus slots make the 840 a better choice. That way, you could put
in a standard 8390 board to get it on the network.
PB 1xx: Anything but the 100, 150, or 190 would work, I imagine. The 190
(and 150, IIRC) have IDE that's not supported as well as a host of other
stuff. The 5xx have buggy 040's and the Duo's are, well, strange. If you
could get something like a 170 or 180 to try to write an ADB driver, that
would be neat.
So I guess that means that you'd have to find 3 extra Macs- an SE/30, a
PowerBook, and an AV Quadra. That seems feasible. Not that I expect every
major problem to be solved in 4 days time, but that array of Macs would at
least provide an opportunity to hack on pretty much any problem somebody
wanted to tackle.
Anyway, I wish you luck. :)
-Andrew
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