Re: debian-68k on two macs
On 8/31/06, Finn Thain <fthain@telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Brian Morris wrote:
[snip]
> anyway, putting sarge on the lcIII it took a full 8 hours, that is for
> the absolute base minimum. should it have taken that long ? how much
> faster would it be if i added the fpu ?
Not a lot faster if it is paging to disk during the install. I haven't
used the sarge installer, but I recall that others reported even longer
installs on macs without sufficient memory. I gather that installing with
64 MB is OK.
i don't think it was, i had tried to run it before with 20MB in there and it
was telling me about low memory and setting up swap - but after i put
in 36MB there were no such messages.
noted that it really does seem extreme to me to need 64MB for the installer
when the base system runs on 10MB (thats what "free" told me once
i was done).
(spoiled: i ran a '98 linux2.0 with kde and 32mb ram on my power mac)
[snip]
> II) of course i wanted to get the 540 going. one thing i did here
> unorthodox perhaps. i use the 540 in powerbook disk mode as external
> disk to the lcIII and i put sarge on that. I know, i have been told that
> sarge, or at least 2.2 kernels won't run on 540.
>
> note i have cd-1 of both sarge and etch-beta, got about two weeks ago.
> also i found the recent update by reading the list here that you had
> gotten 2.6.17 kernel and i downloaded that. but i have lost any links i
> might have had to recent successes with 500 series powerbook except for
> the emile home page which shows a 520c booting.
[snip]
You'll probably do better with the 2.2 kernel than 2.6 on the lc. But if
you do try to boot 2.6.17, I'd be curious to hear the results.
As for the 540, the problem is the 68LC040. There was a thread on this
problem (and 5xx powerbooks) a year or so ago on this list or the
linux-m68k list. From that discussion I think we concluded that you must
either disable swap, or else have a machine completely free of FPU
instructions (e.g. a kernel configured with CONFIG_M68KFPU_EMU_ONLY, and
userspace built with -msoft-float). But I don't know if anyone ever put
that to the test.
well yes, i have seen some of that discussion from way back actually.
that there were some differences in the LC040 so for instance macs
were more broken that other brands. there was actually a revision number
i have not tracked yet. but anyway, i had some evidence from macos
programs that the 540 was perhaps less broken, or possible even fine,
it was a sort of revision of the 520.
another point is if i put the upgrade sonnet presto card in my lc, i believe the
$100 card which uses an LC040 should be fine in that respect, as it
is a recently made one, not the apples original oem thing. but there
is still the speed issues, which is why i really would try hard to get the
540 going first if i can.
-f
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