Some advice about *nix on my Q610

[andreadandrea]

Hallo everybody,

since some months a new idea appeared in my mind: bring back to life my old Quadra 610.

It has been down almost uninterruptedly since the 90', but there are still in its hd some important files to me and some interesting sw, that I would like to undust.

I started browsing around to get the last breaking news about old m68k macs and I found many hints, so I decided that what I would like to do is to muscle a little bit my mac and to put in it a/ux, netbsd and maybe substitute the presently installed macos 7.5.5 with macos8.1 (with multi boot).

At the moment I have the sw and part of the hw (it's being dificult to me to find the cdrom and a larger hd, but I should be able to get to 20MB ram soon).

Now I need some advice:

- is 20MB of ram ok for a/ux, netbsd and macos8.1? Take in account that this mac is _not_ going to be heavy duty at all.

- what is the minimum hd I need to put in all what I said? I am no developer but maybe I would compile some old time classic of mine (angband, nethack) if I can't get them on binary.

- what partition scheme would you advice to me? please include all mac partitions and swap (the same partion for a/ux and netbsd, I guess).

- how can I dual boot? I read about system picker and so, but it's still unclear to me.

- some advice on the cdrom: my Q610 has a pizzabox case and needs a special cover for the cdrom, any advice on how to fit a generic cdrom inside without cover and plastic guides? Maybe better put inside the big hd and get an external cdrom?

- what's the matter with openbsd on m68k? nobody speaks about it...

Ok, this post is so long I stop.

I hope somebody holded on down to here and will clarify a little bit things to me

byebye,

Andrea

 

[wthww]

It really depends what you want to do. Any modern version of current *nix operating systems will eat your quadra alive with any less than 64mb ram. And I don't quite reccomend linux for Q610/650, the adb driver has issues. NetBSD is nice, albeit a tad weird sometimes. The best thing I think you could do, if you just want to try something new, would be to try A.UX. It can handle less ram, and was made to run on the hardware-- even tho it can be more than quirky sometimes. All that matters if you like it anyways-- so don't let my ramblings stop you from running a *nix on your machine-- My Q650 runs NetBSD, but it has 128mb RAM, x2 18gb HDs, and a CD-RW.

//wthww

 

[bluekatt]

but keep in mind that getting a hold of a\ux is no trivial matter your best bet is trying to get a hold of the cd's for version 3

20 mb is a bit on the light side if you can find more ram then do so

a 1 gig hd should be enough you could wing it by 500 mb

 

[Scott Baret]

Welcome to the forums!

Some advice on the CD-ROM...your best bet is the external drive. Apple's CD300e drive is my personal favorite and I know a lot of others on this forum have had success with them as well. Look for one of those and you should be in good shape there.

Also, in regards to RAM--with OS 8 I would recommend 32MB or higher.

 

[porter]

- some advice on the cdrom: my Q610 has a pizzabox case and needs a special cover for the cdrom, any advice on how to fit a generic cdrom inside without cover and plastic guides?

I used a drill, coping saw, file and stanley knife on the blank cover to make a bezel on my 6100.

Make sure you have a 68040.

Only run A/UX on machines officially supported by A/UX it is very pedantic.

Run NetBSD and you'll have better more options.

 

[ChristTrekker]

20 MiB is fine for A/UX or a console *nix. I've run X11 on low-RAM 68ks, but it's an exercise in patience at best. You can install easily on to as small as a 230 MB drive, but 500 or 1 GB is better if you plan on doing any kind of development, including building programs from source code. I like NetBSD over Linux for 68k.

 

[Charlieman]

NetBSD is an overnight install, in my experience with a mega fast IIci. Put the install files on a fast disk, preferrably on the internal SCSI bus. Don't expect a fast installation from a Zip drive or CD-ROM.

A/UX is a much quicker install and it seems to be 100% binary. Check the old threads here for info about third party CD-ROM drives that are A/UX compatible.

 

[porter]

NetBSD is an overnight install

You can just install kernel, base and etc from a MacOS partition, then boot into NetBSD and install the rest using tar, that is much quicker.

 

[John8520]

If you do a NetBSD netinstall (booting the kernel, NOT doing it through macos) you can have it done in about two hours.

I never saw why you would want to do it through macos, it's so slow when it comes to disk i/o...

 

[Charlieman]

I did the tars from a Zip disk. Must use fast SCSI device...

 

[porter]

I never saw why you would want to do it through macos, it's so slow when it comes to disk i/o...

It does mean you can install from an AppleShare server.

 

[andreadandrea]

- how can I dual boot? I read about system picker and so, but it's still unclear to me.- what's the matter with openbsd on m68k? nobody speaks about it...

Thanks everybody for your answers to my questions!

Even if nobody wants to speak about openbsd (it must be real bad! > , I still would like to get any hint on dual boot.

From what I read in the netbsd booter manual, it is seems to be a macos executable that can be launched in any moment from the macos session in a normal macos fs. So netbsd is easily dualboot with system 6 or 7 (8?).

On the other side, the a/ux booter seems to be a macos executable that is launched automaticly when booting from a special and reduced system 7 fs. So I should install both this special reduced fs in a macos partition and my normal macos partition. How can I dual boot from any one of them two?

The only two ideas I have is to do it with System Picker ot to place the two partition in different hd and force the boot from a specific hd with a key combination at startup.

I hope I can do it since my curiosity is really to try both netbsd and a/ux at the same time in my computer.

See you,

Andrea

 

[Charlieman]

Good questions.

You should be able to handle the dual booting using Extensions Manager or one of the alternatives. In the first partition, create a useful System 7.1+ configuration for Mac OS. Install A/UX into a second partition (plus swap), with the boot utility in the Mac OS partition. Install NetBSD into a third partition (plus swap), with the boot utility in the Mac OS partition. You should also be able to manage this with second or third disks, rather than partitions, keeping the boot utilities on the first disk.

For a PowerMac, something similar would work with most Linux distros and BeOS