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Re: pcmcia ethernet card support for m68k?



On 8/10/20 8:03 PM, Finn Thain wrote:
> ...
> 
> ISTR the 190 and 5300 did have an optional infrared port. Unfortunately 
> the IRDA stack got removed from Linux in v4.17.

The PB 190 has infrared, which only supports Apple???s IRtalk in Mac OS.
But it doesn't matter for Linux since IRDA support has been removed.

> 
> I've been working on other issues because the Powerbook 190 is limited to 
> 40 MB of RAM (and that upgrade is probably unobtainable/unaffordable now).
> 
> Another limitation of the 190 is the missing FPU, which means the CPU has 
> to emulate those instructions which is slow. The FPU emulation in Linux is 
> incomplete and the end result is that you can't run 'fio' for example.
> 
> The way I see it, implementing Localtalk support, better FPU emulation or 
> any of a dozen other issues would be more rewarding because that might 
> help with lots of Mac models (particularly those with more RAM).
> 

Supporting LocalTalk in Linux would be great for communicating with
older Macs (and even better if you're talking about TCP/IP over
LocalTalk, which would potentially allow Internet access via some
LocalTalk/Ethernet bridges).

On the 190, I can use a PCMCIA network card in Mac OS, which along with
the FTP server in NCSA Telnet 2.7b4 can be used to move files reliably
to and from any HFS volume.  It sounds like there may not be enough PB
190 users to justify spending any more effort in getting PCMCIA working
in Linux.


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