[A/UX] Drop-in clean A/UX install image for SCSI2SD

[unxmaal]

The first major barrier to experimentation with A/UX is obtaining compatible hardware.

Once you have the hardware, the second has been the installation process, which is, frankly, burdensome and finicky.

@pb3623 and I have been working on creating a "clean" A/UX installation that can be dd'd to a SD card, for use with a SCSI2SD.

This image will boot to A/UX upgraded to 3.1.1. We have included a mirror of Jagubox, and another mirror with GNU/OSS binaries compiled as recently as 2010.

We have made some improvements, including installation of more modern GNU tools, and added them to the $PATH.

This installation also has a working OpenSSH sshd.

If anyone is interested in helping us with our first external test, please post here, or PM me.

When we're satisfied this image works for others as well as it has for us, we will make another post linking to the Github repo and the image.

Thanks!

 

[CC_333]

Hmm, I might be interested, if I can remember where all my A/UX-compatible Macs are :/

c

 

[TimHD]

Great idea. Haven’t managed to get A/UX working on anything yet - so not sure if I am a good test subject, but happy to assist however I can. 

 

[pb3623]

Awesome. We're grateful for any interest, to the extent that it gives us more test cases. We have a "product backlog" of sorts with to-do items but the 0.3a release can be considered minimally viable and certainly enough to put it through its paces (to see what breaks).

Tagging @maceffects since we had a separate conversation about this (and he actually received one of the first images)

 

[Realitystorm]

I might be able to help too, as part of the collection of disks I got from a apple developer I have a lot of different versions of A/UX.

I think I have version 1.0 (it doesn't have a version #), 1.0b2, 2.0b1, 2.0b2, 2.0b3, 2.0b4, 2.0 

I thought I had version 3 too, but can't find it, was really hoping for a version 4 beta in the box o'disks but no luck.

I have a Mac IIx that needs some TLC (battery/recap) that I can do installs with to a SCSI2SD drive for imaging.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Have we got a list of compatible Macs and minimum config requirements handy? This would be the place to post it. []

 

[unxmaal]

http://www.aux-penelope.com/hardware.htm

Have we got a list of compatible Macs and minimum config requirements handy? This would be the place to post it. []

 

[unxmaal]

Here's a link to the project, with instructions:

https://github.com/unxmaal/aux_sdcard

I will PM the image URL as requested.

 

[pb3623]

http://www.aux-penelope.com/hardware.htm

From said site, for our friends on mobile.

Green good, red bad. Be green.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Wow! That was fast, thanks for filling in the gaps for noobs like me.

I've been looking for an excuse to buy the V6 Fast SCSI 2 version SCSI2SD to run off the ATTO card in the pet IIfx. Given the pickiness of A/UX, what might be the prospects for compatibility?

 

[unxmaal]

Wow! That was fast, thanks for filling in the gaps for noobs like me.

I've been looking for an excuse to buy the V6 Fast SCSI 2 version SCSI2SD to run off the ATTO card in the pet IIfx. Given the pickiness of A/UX, what might be the prospects for compatibility?

As picky as A/UX is, I wouldn't. 

Or do, and let us know if it works!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

A/UX was developed for the IIfx, no? I'd think support for SCSI cards for fast disk arrays would have been part of that plan, I'll check the release date of my card against A/UX development before making the jump. I can always test with one of the UltraSCSI server drives on one of my adapters in the meantime if you do a CD installer version of your SD project.

 

[pb3623]

I see your point... my thought is that there is some base compatibility, just like the SCSI2SD doesn't require drivers, per se (once you set termination and some of the low-level options in the utility)? Just like display cards (like my way-overkill SuperMac Thunder/24) work at certain resolutions and anything based off the Apple SONIC-based card?

I don't have a Jackhammer or SEIV, and you don't have a SCSI2SD. Heh.

But you may be able to burn the .img to a bootable CD using 'hdiutil burn'

Then again, you really wanted to buy the SCSI2SD v6. I can tell; do you really need an excuse?  

 

[Realitystorm]

I'm thinking it would be good to set up a System 7.5.5 and A/UX dual boot image.

http://www.floodgap.com/retrotech/os/aux/

The author also had a link to the Apple KB article that lists which systems are or are not supported, backs up the grid posted earlier.

https://support.apple.com/kb/TA31173?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

Now to find time to pull my IIx out of storage and get it going again.

 

[unxmaal]

I'm thinking it would be good to set up a System 7.5.5 and A/UX dual boot image.

We discussed dual-booting, and decided it made little sense to support both A/UX and another OS (or several), as the image is made to be written to an easily-swapped SD card.

 

[pb3623]

Now... @unxmaal thinks I'm defeating the purpose of even having A/UX installed but I do have 7.6.1 and 8.1 installed on separate partitions (as defined in scsi2sd-util). It's been handy for troubleshooting network or peripherals, and to me has a little value. But even then I agree that having these dual/triple-boot partitions complicates things from a configuration management perspective.

One thing you could do, for example, is to use larger than an 8 GB card and carve out an extra partition or two at the end of your 8 GB drive's "end sector" in scsi2sd-util (I wouldn't exceed 2 GB if you want to be able to mount these in A/UX). Then, using Lido, Silverlining, HD Setup SC, etc you would just format that free space as HFS once it's made available to the OS. But the beauty of this image is, you can easily back it up (either using 'dd' as the GitHub explains, or get an application like 'ApplePi-Baker' (essentially a 'dd' front-end for burning Raspberry Pi images) and restore if things go awry.

 

[Realitystorm]

Now... @unxmaal thinks I'm defeating the purpose of even having A/UX installed but I do have 7.6.1 and 8.1 installed on separate partitions (as defined in scsi2sd-util). It's been handy for troubleshooting network or peripherals, and to me has a little value. But even then I agree that having these dual/triple-boot partitions complicates things from a configuration management perspective.

One thing you could do, for example, is to use larger than an 8 GB card and carve out an extra partition or two at the end of your 8 GB drive's "end sector" in scsi2sd-util (I wouldn't exceed 2 GB if you want to be able to mount these in A/UX). Then, using Lido, Silverlining, HD Setup SC, etc you would just format that free space as HFS once it's made available to the OS. But the beauty of this image is, you can easily back it up (either using 'dd' as the GitHub explains, or get an application like 'ApplePi-Baker' (essentially a 'dd' front-end for burning Raspberry Pi images) and restore if things go awry.

I'm getting a bit confused, I thought the scsi2sd-util let you carve up an SD card in to separate "drives" and assign each "drive" to a separate SCSI ID.   I was thinking something simpler, an image file for a single drive containing the boot block and partition table, so that the single emulated drive contains multiple partitions, with images predone for some common SD card sizes.   I already have this for the images I host on my site for System 7.5.5 and System 6.0.8 http://www.savagetaylor.com/2018/05/28/setting-up-your-vintage-classic-68k-macintosh-creating-your-own-boot-able-disk-image/

 

[unxmaal]

I'm getting a bit confused, I thought the scsi2sd-util let you carve up an SD card in to separate "drives" and assign each "drive" to a separate SCSI ID.   I was thinking something simpler, an image file for a single drive containing the boot block and partition table, so that the single emulated drive contains multiple partitions, with images predone for some common SD card sizes.   I already have this for the images I host on my site for System 7.5.5 and System 6.0.8 http://www.savagetaylor.com/2018/05/28/setting-up-your-vintage-classic-68k-macintosh-creating-your-own-boot-able-disk-image/

If you have an idea of how to do that, please let me know. I was unable to get A/UX to see anything other than this 2 "drive" layout. 

 

[Realitystorm]

If you have an idea of how to do that, please let me know. I was unable to get A/UX to see anything other than this 2 "drive" layout. 

The link I posted seemed to describe a walk through for how to set this up.   http://www.floodgap.com/retrotech/os/aux/.   Once I have my Mac IIx up and running I was going to try either a 4GB card, or a larger card set up as multiple drives, with SCSI 0 mapped to the first "drive".   Then partition the 4GB drive as they describe.  I'm going to have to track down LaCie Silverlining 5.8.3 to see if that works better than the patched HD SC that I currently use.