Rick Genter wrote:
Wow - I must be tired, sorry about the typos: On Oct 25, 2004, at 09:43 PM, Rick Genter wrote:I have a PowerBook 540c; I've had it since I bought it back in 1994 when they first came out. Recently I dug it out of my old hardware closet and fired it up. It still works just fine, though the battery won't hold a charge.My observation is that Linux generally works better on slow hardware than the "native" graphical OSes such as Windows or MacOS, so I decided I wanted to try and put Linux on my PowerBook. After investigation, though, it looks like Linux is currently not quite there for my PowerBook:- the 68K implementations don't support the 68LC040- the Macintosh 68K implementations don't boot natively; you have to through a MacOS-based bootloader, requiring a MacOS partition on the hard driveObviously I meant that "you have to *go* through a MacOS-based bootloader.
That's not necessary true anymore. Try EMILE (@sourceforge.net). It's a floppy based bootloader for Linux/m68k. Not all machine's are supported yet, but please give it a try.
That being the case, and being a believe,And here I mean "being a believer in the open source development model"I'd like to volunteer to help make the PowerBook 540c a first-class Linux citizen. My question: where would my efforts be best applied? 68LC040 support? Nativing booting? Somewhere else?
LC040 support is tricky because of a bug that prevents FPU emulation from working correctly up to now. There's been some talk about ways to work around this bug on the linux/m68k and linux/mac68k maillists (CCed), but it's not been done yet. Most people nowadays by a full 68040 on eBay and replace their LC040. On the Powerbooks (540c only) this may not be as easy, because I think I read somewheren the LC040 is soldered onto the motherboard on PowerBooks, whereas it is in a socket on desktop models.
Also PowerBooks used to be the least supported models because not much kernel-developers have them. Powerbook support used to be in the 2.4.x kernels. On desktop models there was no working 2.4.x. This also made installing somewhat non-automagic as you had to install the modules by hand. Nowadays kernel-development is concentrated on the 2.6.x series. 2.4.x for desktops is abandoned. There is a 2.6.8 kernel in unstable that works on Christian Steigies Quadra840AV. It's here: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/base/kernel-image-2.6.8-mac . Christian also has a page with notes what could be done (m68k-generic) at http://people.debian.org/~cts/debian-m68k/help.html.
The Linux Mac68k information is at http://linux-mac68k.sourceforge.net/. This page also has a section on development, with areas were help is most welcome. The Linux/mac68k mailinglist is at linux-mac68k@mac.linux-m68k.org, and the general Linux/m68k mailinglist has just moved to linux-m68k@vger.kernel.org but linux-m68k@list.linux-m68k.org should also work.
One area I think Linux/mac68k is lacking is SCSI DMA support on the NCR53c9x. This makes these machines quite slow. If you can help out with that is would be great, although the Linux/mac68k status page tells me your PB540c has a NCR5380. Someone did write (some parts?) of the SCSI-DMA driver for that.
The Linux/mac68k status page used to be at http://maclinuxstatus.sourceforge.net/status/ but since a few months to half a year back I only get 404s. The webarchive still has it though, at: http://web.archive.org/web/20040211060716/maclinuxstatus.sourceforge.net/status/
HTH, Erik. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik C.J. Laan elaan at dds.nl Please reply below the message, please cut unrelevant pieces from a reply. --------------------------------------------------------------------------