Linux for 601-based PPC Macs?

jTepp... asks: "The company I work for is upgrading the majority of our systems, and migrating to Linux for most of the machines. I have a lab full of early PPC Macs that I now have been told to Migrate to Linux if possible, or scrap the entire room and start over. Since this would come directly out of my IT budget, and I need to use it for other projects, I'd rather keep the machines. The catch is that most of these units are powered by 601 chips, for which I'm having a difficult time finding a flavor of Linux that will support. I see support for older chips, and newer chips, but not the 601. Anyone know why? Or where I can find support?"

Comments

mklinux

[Ranc0r]

mklinux will work on almost all nubus macs.

Re:mklinux

[Phexro]

I can second this. I have MkLinux running on a PowerMac 7100/80. Not running fast, mind you, but running.

I know that work has been done more recently to get Linux to run natively on NuBus hardware, but I haven't played with it. I'd recommend that you try that first.

Re:mklinux

[grammar nazi]

I third this. I successfully ran MkLinux on a PowerMac 7100/80 from late 1996 (an early version) until just early 2001. Granted, that I only used the PowerPC as a fileserver the last few years, it never failed me.

During the first 3-4 years, MkLinux was my XServer to Solaris workstations in my schools engineering building. I would even run Motif from the engineering building, displaying itself on X in my dorm.

One impressive point is that enventually, when I gave the Mac away (Summer 2001), my friend noticed a few h4xx0red programs running in the background. Apparently, all of those years as a file server allowed somebody to hack in. I even reinstalled in the newer version of MkLinux 2000.

The coolest thing about the Mac is that I still needed the Mac OS 7.6 to boot MkLinux. I was able to install the entire Mac OS 7.6 + CD reading extensions + MkLinux booter + SimpleText onto an 8 MB partition!

nubus-pmac project...

[huberj]

Perhaps these PPC Macs are supported by the nubus-pmac project?

From the nubus-pmac site, the following machines are supported:

• Apple Power Macintosh 6100, 7100, 8100 and compatibles
• Apple PowerBook 1400, 2300, 5300
• Apple Performa 5200, 6200, 6300

The nice thing about this is they have kernel's with installers for Debian (woo!), YDL, and LinuxPPC. (and MkLinux...but you probably don't want that...)

Good luck!

Re:nubus-pmac project...

[Knife_Edge]

See my post above for my opinion on the near futility of this. I have tried the nubus-pmac stuff also, using a variety of different kernel configurations, and both YDL and mklinux. My success rate was a stunning zero percent with a couple of different machines, both 6100 compatibles. By failure I mean the machines never made it past the bootloader. Admittedly, these models did not use the 601 processor, but as pointed out below someplace the real problem is the wacky bus. I wish you good luck and success with this endeavor but I must offer this cautionary tale.

Re:nubus-pmac project...

[Chasing Amy]

The old PowerMacs *ARE* PPC Macs, so please stop having a cow about things of which you clearly are ignorant. They had PowerPC processors; they did not, however, use the PCI bus, they used a weird bus architechture called NuBus. And what is a "860xx CPU"? Oh, you mean "680xx CPU," which again is not what we're discussing here. 6100s and other low-end PowerMacs used PPC processors.

Re:nubus-pmac project...

[foniksonik]

You're correct about the 86/68 thing... dislexic I suppose. Anyways.. this is the part I was flaming about:

"My success rate was a stunning zero percent with a couple of different machines, both 6100 compatibles. By failure I mean the machines never made it past the bootloader. Admittedly, these models did not use the 601 processor,"

If the models he/she tested did not use the 601 processor then they weren't PPC nor were they '6100 compatible' whatever that means. Point is that the info provided wasn't a relevant case study and I felt the need to point that out.

NuBus wasn't 'wierd', it was current for the time. Nubus had a very healthy following for many years.

Before PCI came along it was THE architecture for audio/video and nobody had any better.

Now we have AGP... in a few years people will be saying how 'wierd' the PCI architecture was and that's why it's no longer supported by the new OSs. Same with SCSI for data transfer vs. ATA.

Re:nubus-pmac project...

[Valdrax]

Oh, for the love of God.

By 6100-compatible, he probably meant clone machines. All clone machines were PowerPC machines since Apple did. If they were meant to be contemporaries of the 6100s, they were probably running 603 chips, which are the next generation of PPC chips, not "860XX" chips.

Now Nubus was weird for the day. It was weird because it was pretty intelligent. Unlike PCI and ISA which had a bunch of IRQ issues, Nubus sorted out cards on its own without need for user intervention. This was a major reason for Apple deciding to use it back in the day. Unfortunately, by the time Apple switched away, Macs were the last machines using Nubus in a mainstream application for the past few years. That combined with its low bandwidth compared to PCI moved Apple to switch. (That and they'd been plagued with low-level errors since they switched to Nubus '90 when they switched from m68k to PPC chips.)

All PowerMacs still have PCI slots and still support PCI video cards. My neighbor has 3 monitors attached to his system thanks to 2 PCI video cards. The only reason AGP wasn't supported before it first came in was that it hasn't been out and used in PCs for very long. PCI will still be around on Macs for a long time until a few years after something better comes out and becomes standard in the PC industry. (Hell, modern PowerMacs still don't use DDR SDRAM or RDRAM for main memory. They're still choking on PC133.)

Incidentally, SCSI is still faster than IDE if you have multiple drives on the same chain as in a RAID for example. IDE/ATA has a huge command overhead compared to SCSI and inferior top speeds. You just don't notice the difference if you aren't really stressing it.

Re:nubus-pmac project...

[ksheff]

FYI: Linux/m68k for Macintosh. FWIW, I have a se/30 running debian at home.

you're asking the wrong question.

[t]

The 601 isn't very different from the 603/604/750/... and Motorola has the relevant docs. The problem is supporting the entire machine, as someone else pointed out, the bus on the motherboard is wacked. Hence the model numbers of the systems are necessary to determine what will run on it.

check here for more info

[foniksonik]

http://nubus.tuxppc.org/index.php

It'll work (with a little work)

[iankerickson]

I used to admin a college lab of these macs -- about 80 6100/6x, some 7100s, and some much, much better 7600's and 7300's.
When MkLinux was first announce on the net, I snagged an abandoned 7100/66 and a spare 2 gig IBM hard disk
(Thanks, Carl!) and installed MkLinux as fast as the school's T1 could get it in the building. I had this idea
I could use the 7100 running netatalk to liberate my side of the lab (the mac side) from our NT file server
(which wasn't a such a bad server, but SFM had some killer bugs that the service packs hadn't fixed, and I
wasn't in charge of applying fixes to the NT box). But when it became obvious I was going to have to spend
every waking minute of my life tweaking this new toy to make sure it didn't crash during finals week or get
hacked by one of the students (I was pretty new to UNIX at the time), I shut the 7100 down and tabled the
project. In retrospect, I kind of wish I'd spend more time on it. But knowing what I know now (i.e. knowing
now how much I didn't know back then), I'm glad I didn't do something stupid, like make every mac in the lab
rely on the MkLinux box for some network service.

So I know a little about what you're about to go through.

First, you need a Linux distro that supports Nu-Bus, because those macs are not PCI based. MkLinux will work.
NetBSD, amazingly, will not run on these macs. That should set off red flags in your head. You're venturing
into unsupported hardware territory. Expect that some hardware won't work AT ALL. In preparation, read
through the Linux docs for whatever distro you find that supports NuBus macs and write down all the hardware
that is reported as unsupported, alpha, buggy, or problematic. If a component is unneeded (like serial ports,
sound in general, or audio input)
then just don't use it, and maybe look for a way to remove or disable that device in the kernel. You really
only need support for video in X, the mouse in X, the keyboard (especially mapping keys), and ethernet.
Forget about sound, and I wouldn't be surprised if the floppy drives only work for booting, but not once
linux is up and running. Maybe you can pass that off as a security "feature".

Second, you need to account for the fact that these macs are not fast. 6100's are barely quick enough to call
"slow". The less software you install on these, the better. If it were me, I'd set them up as thin clients
with X, a browser, telnet/ssh, maybe java, maybe a few helpers for the browser, and that's about it. Run
everything else over X hosted off a better machine. If you have a few faster macs with a 604 or better yet
a G3 or G4 (not a 603) consider reserving it as an X host for users to log into with XDM. Ideally, you'll
want two or three machines for failover or a hot spare. If you have a
more modern mac as an X host, you can run RedHat, NetBSD, SuSE, or even MacOS X (I suppose) on it, and the X
clients can run software from it over the network. Just give the X host plenty of RAM, fast ethernet, and
SCSI disks, and it should be fine. Also, the less software you install on the 6100 as a client, the fewer
bugs you'll have to deal with where software XYZ doesn't run properly on the 601 due to some bug in the PPC
targeting code of gcc.

Third, you have to prepare for the unique "features" of the Macintosh platform that are going to get in your
way. You'll need a boot-loader that runs from the MacOS because these macs lack OpenFirmware. PCI macs at
least can boot other operating systems by finding a boot-loader on any HFS, IS0-9660, or FAT partition. Your
macs will each need a bootable HFS (MacOS) partition with just enough MacOS to run the linux boot loader
(usually an extension), with maybe some ResEdit hacks to keep users from bypassing linux on bootup. Once your
users get into MacOS, all security is gone and they can do whatever they like, including erase or hack the linux
partition (using ext2 utilities). I would use a tool like RevRDist for the Mac side, so you can master the HFS partition from any
AppleShare server (or netatalk). Then use rdist or rsync on the linux side in the start up scripts to master the linux
file system from a server. Use the Apple "Network Access Disk" to jumpstart the whole process from a bootable
floppy. If some genius hacks the bootup sequence and reinstalls MacOS (which they will, because MacOS unlike
Linux will let them do whatever they want without ever a "permission denied") you can remaster the whole mac
just by rebooting from a read-only floppy and running RevRDist from the server share. You should also
should figure out what you're going to do about mouse buttons. You probably only have 1 button mice. The X
Window system likes 3 buttons. The standard workaround is option+1/2/3 to fake that mouse button with the
keyboard. It will take less than 60 seconds of that to either fuck up your hands or just plain drive you
crazy. Use xmodmap to remap buttons 1, 2, and 3 to some single keys, like /, *, and - on the number keypad
or something. Or look at the price of 3 button ADB mice and multiply that by the number of macs you have...

Basically, don't make it up as you go along and expect to get lucky. It's not going to happen. With a
little thought and preparation, you should be able to automate everything and have maintenance-free LAN of
semi-decent thin clients/X terminals that just happen to show a "happy mac" when they (rarely) boot up. And
when you see how fast Linux runs on a 6100 compared to MacOS, you'll probably be smiling too.

Re:It'll work (with a little work)

[iankerickson]

You might as well say, don't use any networking on these macs, because the builtin ethernet is so slow. It is -- that's true -- but without ethernet the machines are much, much less useful. You don't wan't X on these because it will run well. It will not. He'll probably be lucky to get 640x480 at 8-bit color. But with only the console, it limits the number of apps he can realistically offer users, unless he wants do code everything with cdialog, pilot, or ksh "select" menus.

Because this is a _migration_ to linux, the users are going to know squat. He'll want X so he can offer apps that anyone who knows how to use a mouse can figure out (provided he puts in the preparation to configure the X resources and windows manager before hand so everything appears to be "just there").

Also, console apps will remind people too much of DOS. It's a PR thing -- people will see it as a step back, not forward (even though, as you and I know, Linux is much better than DOS). If a decision-maker see these macs and makes the association with DOS, he could kill the whole project. I remember what it was like supporting VMS terminal apps, like PINE, EVE, NOTES, and LYNX. These are great programs, but too many people just don't get the idea. You'll lose hours and hours hand-holding people through console apps who could otherwise use a browser all day without ever bothering you for help.

Without X, you might as well toss all these macs in the garbage and buy 100 dumb terminals from Boundless. You can buy them in bulk for $80 each, and they'll be alot less hassle to maintain then PPCs with a linux booter that depends on a working MacOS partition to boot up.

Re:NetBSD

[benjamindees]

from your link:
PowerPC 601-based machines
The PowerMac 7200 series machines and original 7500 machines are powered by a PowerPC 601 microprocessor. The rest of the chipset is essentially the same as the other early PCI PowerMacs. Right now, there is no PPC601 support in the kernel. Once someone adds this, these models should "just work".

Yellow Dog Linux

[BitGeek]

YDL will install on some machines unsupported by more non-commercial distros. I'm in the process of getting it going on a 7300.

I bet it will work on your machine too.

MkLinux mailing list

[Goronguer]

Apple hosts a mailing list for MkLinux. This will be your most useful source of information if you pursue the MkLinux route, as much of the information on the MkLinux website is out of date. The people on the list are very friendly and helpful with even the most absolute-newbie questions (and if your Linux experience is limited to the PC realm, you will have some newbie questions relating to Linux on Macs). There are searchable archives of the list as well. Good luck with your quest.

performance

[green pizza]

Second, you need to account for the fact that these macs are not fast. 6100's are barely quick enough to call "slow".

I ran MkLinux on a few 6100 (60 and 66 MHz PPC 601) and 8100 (80, 100, and 110 MHz 601) machines several years ago. Totally unaccelerated X11 was a pain at times, but overall performance was fine... more than enough for a general use screw-around box, especially with lightweight applications. You're not going to want to run GNOME or KDE, but if you want a decent box to learn basic linux/un*x, X11, and networking, it'll suit you fine.
As an NFS, web (NCSA HTTPd and later, Apache), bind, and sendmail server, our 6100/60 worked like a charm, and was significantly faster than our Pentium 133 box running NT 3.5 and several commercial daemons.
For light graphical and non graphical tasks, a PPC 601 is more than fast enough. There are still many servers still in use running on that CPU, and much slower CPUs as well. NeXTstations and NeXTcubes (Motorola 68030 and 68040 CPUs) running NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP as well as 68030/68040 Macs running A/UX are still common in academia for moderate-use servers in situations where their existing setup "just works". Granted, if such machines were to start grinding on PHP or complex perl scripts, the load average alone would cause a buffer overflow...
Note that if you want to use the on-board ethernet of the 6100/7100/8100 machines, you'll need an AAUI->RJ45 transceiver... a little $15 dongle to convert Apple AUI to the more common RJ45. Ditto for Apple's 68040-based Centris and Quadra machines.