Getting back in the saddle - Mac LC475

[Scott Holder]

Hey folks,

Been involved on and off with the community for a long time. 20+ years
now. I think last I was really doing much was 2014-2015, but life,
moving, getting married, and junk got in the way and my Linux Macs went
in the closet.

I recently got my modified LC475 back up and running. I only have vague
recollection of what I was messing with but it successfully boots a
"4.1.35-mac_scsi+" labelled kernel, with a couple others with egret
mentions. I forget what I was up to at the time, but I suspect I was
working with someone (Finn Thain?) about getting Egret working better. I
have a 4.12 from somewhere that isn't working. I feel bad for
disappearing, but life is complex. Unfortunately I have a few years of
email stuck in a semi-broken database I haven't dug into so I can't look
back at History.

At any rate, I'm looking to get back in the saddle and see what's going
on with the community, and what kind of updates and happenings might
have happened in the last decade. How's the status of m68k Linux on
Macs? Is there anything I can help with again all these years later?

Scott H.

[Finn Thain]

G'day Scott,

Post by Scott Holder
...
I recently got my modified LC475 back up and running. I only have vague
recollection of what I was messing with but it successfully boots a
"4.1.35-mac_scsi+" labelled kernel, with a couple others with egret
mentions. I forget what I was up to at the time, but I suspect I was
working with someone (Finn Thain?) about getting Egret working better. I
have a 4.12 from somewhere that isn't working. I feel bad for
disappearing, but life is complex. Unfortunately I have a few years of
email stuck in a semi-broken database I haven't dug into so I can't look
back at History.
At any rate, I'm looking to get back in the saddle and see what's going
on with the community, and what kind of updates and happenings might
have happened in the last decade. How's the status of m68k Linux on
Macs? Is there anything I can help with again all these years later?

Linux/mac68k has improved gradually over the last 5 years or so. There
were numerous bug fixes that may benefit your Macs and even some new
functionality like /dev/nvram.

For the LC475 there are still missing drivers (e.g. Localtalk and Apple
Sound Chip) and unfinished drivers that don't fully exploit hardware
capabilities, like SWIM and DAFB chips.

Last year I replaced all the electrolytic capacitors in a pair of Quadras
I use for testing. I recommend that you take a close look at your LC475
boards before putting them to work again.

I still put stable mac68k kernel binaries on sourceforge from time to
time. I will put up another one as soon as Al Viro's recent bug fix for
arch/m68k/mm/fault.c goes upstream as it is needed on mac68k systems.

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

Hi Finn,

Post by Finn Thain

Post by Scott Holder
I recently got my modified LC475 back up and running. I only have vague
recollection of what I was messing with but it successfully boots a
"4.1.35-mac_scsi+" labelled kernel, with a couple others with egret
mentions. I forget what I was up to at the time, but I suspect I was
working with someone (Finn Thain?) about getting Egret working better. I
have a 4.12 from somewhere that isn't working. I feel bad for
disappearing, but life is complex. Unfortunately I have a few years of
email stuck in a semi-broken database I haven't dug into so I can't look
back at History.
At any rate, I'm looking to get back in the saddle and see what's going
on with the community, and what kind of updates and happenings might
have happened in the last decade. How's the status of m68k Linux on
Macs? Is there anything I can help with again all these years later?

Linux/mac68k has improved gradually over the last 5 years or so. There
were numerous bug fixes that may benefit your Macs and even some new
functionality like /dev/nvram.
For the LC475 there are still missing drivers (e.g. Localtalk and Apple
Sound Chip) and unfinished drivers that don't fully exploit hardware
capabilities, like SWIM and DAFB chips.
Last year I replaced all the electrolytic capacitors in a pair of Quadras
I use for testing. I recommend that you take a close look at your LC475
boards before putting them to work again.
I still put stable mac68k kernel binaries on sourceforge from time to
time. I will put up another one as soon as Al Viro's recent bug fix for
arch/m68k/mm/fault.c goes upstream as it is needed on mac68k systems.

JFYI, if you want to build a v6.2-based kernel, you can use my m68k-v6.2
branch, which includes Al's fix, and all m68k changes queued for
v6.3-rc1.

Alternatively, you'll have to wait for v6.3-rc1 (assumed Al's fixes
will land there, they're still not in linux-next), or until the fixes
have been backported to v6.2-stable. Or just create your own ;-)

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

Geert

[Scott Holder]

<snip>
I still put stable mac68k kernel binaries on sourceforge from time to
time. I will put up another one as soon as Al Viro's recent bug fix for
arch/m68k/mm/fault.c goes upstream as it is needed on mac68k systems.

Very cool, was able to grab the latest available kernel and it booted
right up. Spent some time getting my userland as up to date as possible
- seems some of that has moved around. I'd love to see the 6.x stuff
being discussed elsewhere up and running - I've already gotten my Mac OS
X on PearPC compiled for m68k working again, so I might as well try to
compile something useful even though I still can't code worth a bean.

Thanks!

Scott H.

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hi Scortt!

Post by Scott Holder
Very cool, was able to grab the latest available kernel and it booted
right up. Spent some time getting my userland as up to date as possible
- seems some of that has moved around.
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/2022-03-28/
I'd love to see the 6.x stuff being discussed elsewhere up and running
- I've already gotten my Mac OS X on PearPC compiled for m68k working
again, so I might as well try compile something useful even though I still
can't code worth a bean.

Not sure whether I can follow: PearPC running on m68k?

Adrian

[Scott Holder]

Post by John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
Hi Scortt!

Post by Scott Holder
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/2022-03-28/

Oh, neat. I'll give this a look. It's an already-installed system but
reinstalling might be easier I guess. Might be a good source for newer
packages if nothing else.

Post by John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
Not sure whether I can follow: PearPC running on m68k?
Adrian

Yep, I compiled PearPC for m68k and it runs fine, for certain values of
fine. Takes literally a couple days to boot, but I might be the only one
to have ever successfully booted OS X on a 68k Mac (albeit in
emulation). I have a page I wrote up about it last time I did it at
http://iamscott.net/68kosx/ . Hoping to recreate it again, maybe tweak
things to do something more interesting.

Scott H.