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Porting *nix to the 6300CD
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aBryce
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 20, 2003 4:32 pm    Post subject: Porting *nix to the 6300CD Reply with quote

The Performa 6300CD is a mid-1990s PowerPC based machine, with a 603e PPC processor @ 97mHz. It has NuBus rather than PCI, and no Open Firmware. It has IDE and SCSI buses, and a motherboard on a slide-out module. The 6300's motherboard module is interchangible with the 630CD's, although that machine is 040 based.

You can read more about the machine itself here: [link=http://www.apple-history.com/noframes/body.php?page=gallery&model=6200]AppleHistory[/link]
(Unfortunatly, I'd imagine that a lot more info on it would be needed to port to it...)

Anyway, I'd like to see Gentoo GNU/Linux ported to it - NetBSD PPC will not run on machines without Open Firmware, and BootX requires a PCI archtecture. (OldWorld macs - since this machine is NuBus, it is pre-OldWorld, I think.)
MkLinux was also non-working, I don't know why - but it crashes before even getting to the Linux booting part.

So, how hard would it be to port Linux to this machine? Or is there some trick to getting MkLinux to work that I don't know about?
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ozonator
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 20, 2003 5:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Never tried it myself, but there's info about using Linux with NuBus PowerMacs here: http://nubus-pmac.sourceforge.net/. There are also links to other related pages near the bottom of that page.

My recollection from the last time I looked at this (couple of years ago) was that Linux support generally isn't great for the NuBus machines, and that there's some technical reason for that; I don't remember what the exact reason is, but I think it might have something to do with Open Firmware. They're also not supported by, e.g., OpenBSD, but I think (not surprisingly) you can get NetBSD to work on some of them.

As for porting Gentoo to such a machine, I'm guessing you might not get much response, since even aside from the Linux/NuBus status, Gentoo tends toward newer hardware -- the maximum RAM for a 6300 is 64 MB, if I remember correctly, which is also the minimum RAM for a doing a normal Gentoo install. If it were me, I'd try Debian with whatever instructions/modifications are indicated by that nubus-pmac page, or, if that doesn't work, NetBSD. Best of luck!
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stonent
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 06, 2003 11:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would think that you'd only need the nubus kernel and the rest would remain the same.
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