my vision for 68k/ early ppc macs

[Osgeld]

that almost brought a tear to my eye

please do make a new post with all the juicy details

 

[johnklos]

NetBSD on m68k Macs is doing quite well. Lots of people use it, it works on most m68k Macs (I'm hard pressed to think of any on which it doesn't work), and I, for one, run it on lots of Macs. We even have a distribution which works on Macs with FPU-less LC040 processors with broken trap handling, so all of those machines which until now couldn't run any Unix (A/UX or free) can now run NetBSD just fine.

It's not going away any time soon. Aside from the compiler tools, it's actually gotten faster over time - NetBSD 5 is definitely noticeably faster than NetBSD 4. The compiler is a different story - for obvious reasons, it gets bigger and slower because of the new features and optimizations possible. But if you spend most of your time running stuff and not much compiling it, it's nothing to worry about.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I have two NetBSD 68Ks, a IIci and a Q605 (with a full '040). They have uptime that is so long that the only time I reboot the IIci, which is the apartment DNS and print server, is when it chews through a cache card (it seems to blow every three years -- this system has been running since 2000).

 

[johnklos]

This is exactly an example of the strong points of Unix on m68k Macs or Macs in general - good quality hardware will run forever.

NetBSD is actively developed, and if people here know details about QuickDraw accelerating NuBus video cards, then X under NetBSD can be accelerated using whatever hardware acceleration is available. It's been added for all sorts of other obscure hardware including video cards for VAXen, so why not NuBus video cards?

One of the reasons that X on m68k NeXT machines was so fast was that those machines had hardware acceleration as well as hardware-based PostScript rendering, which was pretty cool. The philosophy was correct - push more work to hardware designed to do it and free up the main CPU for other things, not too unlike OpenCL nowadays. It just goes to show how long it takes for good ideas to get widespread acceptance sometimes.

In any case, if anyone is interested in getting NetBSD running on any of their machines, I'd be glad to help, particularly for anyone who'd like to get some use out of an LC040 system.

 

[ChristTrekker]

if people here know details about QuickDraw accelerating NuBus video cards, then X under NetBSD can be accelerated using whatever hardware acceleration is available. It's been added for all sorts of other obscure hardware including video cards for VAXen, so why not NuBus video cards?

Just need to get the "real" X server working on mac68k, instead of the old 1-bit or OSFA color ones we have now. IIRC, there was a spurt of work last(?) year with the mac68k framebuffer that looked promising. Dunno what happened with that.

I currently don't have any 68k NB boxes (with the AV SCSI issues, I retired my Q840), but as soon as I get my CC operational again, that's what I'll be running on it.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Yeah, one of these weekends, when I have the whole weekend with nothing to do, I'm going to put NetBSD on both my quad-socket, 16-thread Itanium server, and on my SE/30 that sits on top of it. Then I'll have the SE/30 acting as the X server for apps running on the Itanium, MUAHAHAHA!

(I also need to get a good piece of serial terminal software for the Apple II so I can use my Apple IIc as a serial terminal for the server.)

 

[Osgeld]

a good piece of serial terminal software for the Apple II

yea i need opinions on that as well, eventho i guess anything would work but im a now proud owner of a //c i got from tmtomh, anyway need to pop into the apple 2 forum and see if theres any threads about this and see whats out there

 

[Bunsen]

Back on the new/old OS idea: Usual disclaimers apply, I am not a coder, pie in the sky, etc. But how about this for older 68ks?

Take MachTEN's design approach. Make the "new" OS a virtual machine: a process that seizes the CPU from the co-operatively multitasking Mac OS/System software, and runs pre-emptively and with memory protection within itself. All screen drawing and other peripheral device handling is dumped back to the OS/Quickdraw, saving having to write new drivers for everything, and allowing native video acceleration, etc. Once the peripheral task is completed, the CPU is handed back to the VM. So System 6 (for example) acts as the "kernel".

eCos would be a possible candidate, whether using the above approach or running natively. (Yes, I have brought this up elsewhere. Pardon the cross-post; I couldn't find this thread at the time). For starters, there's already a 68k port, albeit for later embedded 68ks, and it is currently developed, supported, and deployed. Given the memory requirements, perhaps (disclaimer above) it could even run on a 128k.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECos

eCos (embedded configurable operating system) is an open source, royalty-free, real-time operating system intended for embedded systems / It is designed to be customizable / programmed in the C programming language, and has compatibility layers and APIs for POSIX and µITRON./

eCos was designed for devices with memory size in the tens to hundreds of kilobytes / It can be used on hardware with too little RAM to support embedded Linux /

eCos runs on a wide variety of hardware platforms, including / Motorola 68000 / PowerPC /

eCos Porting Guide

The only M68k port I can find is for the Coldfire. As I understand it from others' comments here, the Coldfire ISA is a subset of that for 680x0s, so my very rough guess is that a backport would be feasible. To run natively, I guess there would be a lot of custom coding involved to get peripheral device support (ethernet, serial, video, SCSI etc)

 

[porter]

As I understand it from others' comments here, the Coldfire ISA is a subset of that for 680x0s, so my very rough guess is that a backport would be feasible.

The original 68k Palms were actually Coldfire CPUs. They were programmed with CodeWarrior. If you look at the internals of PalmOS you can see it's Macintosh heritage.