Gentoo on m68k

Zach Lowry · Posted: Fri May 16, 2003 6:56 pm Post subject: Gentoo on m68k

Hello!

I just wanted to let everybody know that Gentoo-m68k is almost to a major milestone, that being, it is close to being fully build in a chroot-style environment, and soon to be booted naitively. I have successfully built nearly every package in the Stage1 tarball.

I plan to finish this cross-build from a Debian Sid host system, then boot naitively, rebuild world using the Gentoo compilers and binutils, and try to make some stage images.

In other news, I would like to be the first m68k Linux distro to boot naitively on the 68k Macintosh. I believe I have some clues as to how to do it, i.e. using the freely available System 7.1 boot disks, replacing Finder with Booter, etc. If anyone has further suggestions, let me know.

Also, while I am in possession of an Amiga 3000, 4 Sun3's and 6 68k Macs, I'm always looking for people interested in testing out images and such once they are built.

bakkus · n00b Joined: 17 Dec 2002 Posts: 33

This is definately interesting.
I would love to be running Gentoo on my old sleeping boxen. currently one is serving my website running Debian Woody, but I'm all in favor of Gentoo. Are you sure about being able to boot natively? From what I understand MacOS has a weird way of initializing its bootloader from a semi-witable ROM, and from there load MacOS... This would be higly itreresting, though, and would sure enough kick some sparks into development of software for the m68k-platform.
Considering the impact old Macs have had (at least here in Scandinavia) on virtually all computer users, there must be several tons of abandoned hardware laying around.

Mindstorm: what about shipping these old shit-boxen running Gentoo off to developing countries. A good way of both enhancing welfare and promoting Linux?

Anyways: Feel free to submit packages. Although I'm not much of a developer, with virtually nonexistent programming skills, I would always be happy to donate a bunch of m86k-cycles to something like this.

Zach Lowry · Posted: Sat May 24, 2003 8:59 pm Post subject:

seemant · Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2003 1:33 am Post subject: just watching

see subject

NicolBolas · Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2003 2:16 am Post subject: I WANT IT!

Well It seems to be a very nice project. I'd like to help you testing it as soon as an install method is avaible. I own a Quadra 900 w/64MB/400MB and a 21" monochrome display. I first wanted to install a lightweight distro to use it as a X terminal but maybe I could do much more thanks to gentoo...
I also might provide an ssh access to it if U need to test anything...
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mart_man00 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Jan 2003 Posts: 245

i have alot m69k macs laying around. i always said i would cluster them(i used to have a little over 30 lcs, now its like 13).

id love to test it out, but im still a linux n00b and really bad with macs.

do you have a site/more info?

MrZammler · Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 7:14 pm Post subject:

I have some Amigas I still actively use, and have gone through debian and NetBSD.

Let me know if you need any help on the Amiga part.

heini · n00b Joined: 20 Sep 2002 Posts: 32

I'm interested also. Once stage1 is ready I'd give it a try on my A3k.

Bye...

Dirk

NitroPye · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 2:03 am Post subject:

Could I get gentoo to boot on my TI-89 calcularor

its a 68k processor
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mart_man00 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Jan 2003 Posts: 245

how about my old apple 2s or my commodore 64! dont forget my vic20 either!

that would be a kool way to kill a math class, like on a 89. i heard linux can be placed on it, but it might of been a joke.

heini · n00b Joined: 20 Sep 2002 Posts: 32

Hi,

maybe this thread is of interest for all potential Gentoo/m68k users, too:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=29985

If anybody is interested, I could try hacking together some ebuilds for a x86 -> m68k toolchain in order to be able to use distcc as described in the above thread.

Bye...

Dirk

mart_man00 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Jan 2003 Posts: 245

im going to have some problems, my lcs have no cdroms.

i need a bare and i mean bare system and stick it on floppies. it would be nice if i could do something like "emerge gentoo-m68k" and have a pp that will copy stuff to a zillion floppies.

i might be able to find a mac network card that has ethernet, the problem is the macs doesnt see the ones they were shipped with(from apple!).

this would be tricky, but it would also be awsome. i have alot of these aying around, i want a cluster!!!

enrique · Guru Joined: 03 Sep 2002 Posts: 342 Location: Denmark

I can try to install Gentoo on my Amiga 4000'040 w/16MB Fast and a CyberVision64 3D

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Squinky86 · Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2003 7:11 pm Post subject: OLD m68k

I look forward to helping test this out, then again, my machine's not much to brag about (Performa550)
4MB RAM, 160MB HD, 33 MHz. w00t! Speed!
If I can fit a scaled down Gentoo + apache on it, that would be cool, even if it freezes when more than one person tries to log in at a time. Oh well, it would be an experiment.
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mart_man00 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Jan 2003 Posts: 245

is there a website for this yet?

NicolBolas · Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2003 11:06 pm Post subject:

I just add a 9GB scsi HD to my quadra900, still have 64MB ram and still ready to compile kde by itself =)
Well, could we have any news about a roadmap or anything like alpha version or a (even buggy) stage1?
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never forget that a cray is the only one arch that can run an endless loop in only 4 hours

Uridium · Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2003 7:51 pm Post subject: Lowery on m68k

Lowery:

Hi.

I've been using m68k linux for many years. Currently also running Debian, anything I can help with horse-power wise to help speedcompiling things? Takes a good four to six hours to rebuild gcc3.3 on my
box.

Machine specs:
CPU: m68XC040 40Mhz @52Mhz
Ram: 128mb
VRam: 2mb
Disk: 2x36gb Quantum Atlas 10k on a 50-68pin converter (Don't flame me!)
Ethernet: Bog standard quadra 10mbps (onboard)

Anything I can do to help?
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mart_man00 · Apprentice Joined: 29 Jan 2003 Posts: 245

any chance you can help me with some ethernet adapters for the old (mac) lcs?

its the standard card from apple, i cant get os 7.5 to see it.

thanks.

DefconAlpha · Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2003 8:34 pm Post subject: m68k linux

So i have an m68k, 4mb of Flash ROM, a keyboard, and a USB GraphLink. I want my 92+ running linux :)

I notice you are in the 'boro. I happen to be up at TTU, so i might be able to help. What do you need for this project?
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MarcQuadra · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2003 2:50 pm Post subject: Any updates?

Just wondering if there have been any developments here, the initial announcement got me all hot and bothered but it seems to be quiet in here now.
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MarcQuadra · Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2003 11:37 am Post subject: I'm going in!

Alright! I just ordered Debian-3.0r1 CDs for my Quadra 660AV. I hope to get it up-and-running with Debian first and then see if I can bootstrap some flavor of Gentoo on the thing. It looks like the 2.6.0-test2 kernel has updates for m68k in it, and a whole bunch of m68k updates landed on 2.4.21!

I'm thinking that if I tell portage to accept keywords "ppc ~ppc" I should be alright for m68k, as they are both big-endian. It's easier than going through portage ebuilds and adding m68k to the keywords.

In the meantime, I'm thinking about purchasing a 'QuadDoubler' and a 128K backside cache card for this thing as I know compiles will take days and days @25MHz. I've already got a 4.3GB SCSI drive and the best 64MB of EDO DRAM I can put in this beast.
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NicolBolas · Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2003 4:40 pm Post subject:

I just upgraded my quadra 900 to a 950. I still have a killing conf for such an old machine, but it still run OS8 as I can't get linux running on it. I tried debian (sorry) but I feel like an alergy to this distro. So is there a way to run gentoo? Where is the stage anounced in the first post?
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never forget that a cray is the only one arch that can run an endless loop in only 4 hours

Zach Lowry · Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2003 8:25 pm Post subject: Status

There's been several people posting replies here, and I thought I'd let you all know what's going on.

I completed a port to m68k. I attempted to let people know about it in the appropriate channels, so it could be incorporated as a mainstream port. However, there was a definite lack of interest from the Gentoo folks. About that same time, I read an article from zwelch on slashdot that was pretty much my feelings exactly on the whole Gentoo deal, basically that the smaller ports, like m68k and hppa and mips, didn't get the kind of focus and attention that the larger ones did.

So, now even though I have a complete stage 1, and probably 2 and 3, I've moved on to Zynot where I will continue working on a Gentoo-style system. If you all would like to use Zynot, I would encourage you to check out the progress at zynot.org. Soon, I hope to put up some images of the work I've done so far...

Thanks to all who were interested!

stonent · Veteran Joined: 07 Aug 2003 Posts: 1139 Location: Texas

I'd be interested in this. I've got A/UX on my Q650. Maybe we could come up with something like compiling it on x86 over NFS? Or if the folks over at Basilisk could get MMU emulation going, we could compile it inside a Basilisk image.
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