Aris Theocharides (aris@padl.com)
Sun, 5 Dec 1999 17:53:06 +1100
Well, the best non-Linux option is to try for NetBSD. The installer
on NetBSD loads via floppy, but you have to use the serial ports
(which for me is fine, as the Shiner box will be a fileserver).
The problematic bit is the ncr53c8xx drivers - they are not in the
kernel by default, and do not support big endian systems.
OpenBSD drivers *have* had work on big endian support - and they
are based on the same driver as in NetBSD.
My (lame) attempts to replace NetBSD's drivers with OpenBSD didn't
get very far.
A good thing though, is that once you've installed NetBSD (I did
it on an 8600) you can set OF to boot disk2:0 and the boot process
is quite sweet after that.
OpenBSD has released 2.6 - but this doesn't include the PowerPC
version - and their bootloader is not as Mac-friendly as NetBSD
(in fact they explictly claim not to support Apple PowerMac systems).
In short - if someone more capable than I is willing to put in work
to replace the NetBSD ncr53c8xx drivers with those in OpenBSD, then
it seems we'd have a BSD option for these boxes.
A.
--_____________________________________________________________________________ aris theocharides aris@padl.com padl software pty. ltd. http://www.padl.com
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