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Suggestions for alternative OSes for 6100 and other NuBus-PPC?

dan.dem

Well-known member
I was once the owner of a 6100. As many, I had big expectations of RISC machines. I had seen some nice Sun and Apollo workstations at university and was awaiting something similar powerful. Not surprisingly I was very disappointed about the performance of my 6100.
Today I still like its looks . Wth an Apple 16 inch display on top it delivers at least the proper workstation look of the early 1990s. And I think the 601-processor is not that bad if you only put an appropriate OS on it.
The question is what OS?

I think nothing useable resulted from Taligent, and Copland never went farer than alpha-quality software. I am not even sure that it will run (or at least crash) on a 6100.
A support technician at work once put MkLinux on my abandoned 5200 (sorry fans, but I only got around when I installed MacBugs on it, so I could at least close open files and avoid disk corruption after each crash). I guess MkLinux may work on a 6100 too.

Any other suggestions? Some reasonable good X-Windows support would be nice.
 

bakkus

Well-known member
Due to the very particular NuBus architecture of the 6100, your only options are MkLinux and anything capable of running on one of the old kernels from the now practically abandoned NuBus Linux Project: http://nubus-pmac.sourceforge.net/

I remember running Debian with a 2.6 kernel on mine many years ago.
 

CC_333

Well-known member
Debian with a 2.6 kernel
Given we're on version 5.x of the kernel nowadays, that's pretty old. However, at least it was released this century (the initial release of version 2.6.x.y was in December 2003, and the last of the 2.6 branch, 2.6.39.4, was released in May 2011 (and EOL'ed in August 2011), when it was superseded by version 3.x), so it can still be made to do some semi-modern stuff, I'm sure, since it's newest version is "only" about 11 years old).

c
 

bakkus

Well-known member
Given we're on version 5.x of the kernel nowadays, that's pretty old. However, at least it was released this century (the initial release of version 2.6.x.y was in December 2003, and the last of the 2.6 branch, 2.6.39.4, was released in May 2011 (and EOL'ed in August 2011), when it was superseded by version 3.x), so it can still be made to do some semi-modern stuff, I'm sure, since it's newest version is "only" about 11 years old).

c
It's an unfortunate result of the peculiar way the x100 series is made - and the time and effort kernel developers were/are willing to commit.
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
Yeah, the NetBSD macppc page has had a note on there for a while saying 'if anyone wants to help make this work on NuBus PMs, please let us know'. The note has been there quite a long time,
 

dan.dem

Well-known member
Thank you, @bakkus, for hinting me to the NuBus Linux Project.
What I also find particulary interesting is a link to an archived website about LTSP Clients.
Reducing the burden on the little processors is a good way to make them longer useful. I used to think that thin clients are mostly about making networked pc administration easier and omitting the once expensive hard disk from a user's computer. But according to what I am reading this could really help reducing stress on the processor.

Just because Yellow Dog Linux is mentioned several times: I don't think it runs of 6/7/8100 generation Macs, right?
 

bakkus

Well-known member
Just because Yellow Dog Linux is mentioned several times: I don't think it runs of 6/7/8100 generation Macs, right?
It doesn't out of the box - you'll have to replace the kernel with a kernel from the NubusPPC people.

I vaguely seem to remember that someone also ported the patches to some version of 3.x and got it working. Should be possible to find by browsing lots of old links with the NuBus SF-site as starting point.
 

dan.dem

Well-known member
So, some people really got it running. Great work!
Years ago I thought YDL is easier to install on Macs than other PPC-distros, but from what I've read recently it's probably not.
I wanted to try it on an original iMac in 2009 but finally opted for Xubuntu (which worked ok but even in idle it drove the little G3 to saturation every few seconds). Maybe I'll give it a try on my clamshell iBook. (Just for fun, since I find Tiger still the most useful OS for it.)
 

stepleton

Well-known member
I've got MkLinux running on my 6100/66, but when it's back in MacOS, what do we do about the DOS card? Well, it's running Minix-VMD, a Minix derivative that's new enough to run X11 but old enough to still have the option of using the PC BIOS (aka INT 13h) for disk I/O. As the DOS card has no other way for an OS to access the (virtual) disk, later versions of Minix, all Linuxes, and most other OSs that try to touch the drive natively won't work. There's a reason it's a "DOS compatibility card" and not a "PC compatibility card"...
 

dr.zeissler

Well-known member
Setting up my 6100/66Dos too. I am using 7.5.5. and I will install MKlinux as well.
Never thought about Linux for the Doscard. I am using Dos62/Win31.
Older video, now switching to BlueSCSI.
 

dan.dem

Well-known member
Nice setup @dr.zeissler ! And I am always amazed about the cool display transition from Mac to the DOS card.
Decades ago I gave a presentation of our BBS being accessed by both a Mac and Windows client using a 6100 DOS. However, I found people more impressed about the cool dimming while transitioning between the two processors than they were about our BBS. A Windows using guy approached me saying: "Fascinating, how Macs are always ahead." :giggle:
 

dr.zeissler

Well-known member
Thx, sorry for the bad quality, I will make better videos soon.
Now BOLLE checks my three 6100 Boards and replaces the caps to make them last the next decade :) !

currently I switched to blueSCSI and ID 0-4 5/6 are for CDROM and Zipdrive.

I got 7.5.3 installed and also MKLinuxDR1... Linux is slow on GNOME, hopefully they have more than that slow window-manager on that release. (I installed "Desktop GNOME") Now I will check how to get the paketmanager up and running to install something else. Currently the best way is to use the console with midnighcommander.

MacOS is really fast when using 7.5.3, I have to install the 7.5.5. update and also a newer open transport and an apple-share-clinet that let me type the address of the newer NAS that has a later AFP and therefore is not recognized by 7.5.3 yet.

I installed some later games and they run surprisingly good like Marathon2 (Lowres), Marathon Highres(but smaller window; can this gui also be used on the later Marathon games) WingCOmmander3 and WingCommander4 where WC4 runs better then WC3...don't know why.

What will be a very big thing is getting a bigger L2 cache so that the entire framebuffer fit's in it, this will give that machine a big boost!
 

Nathan_A

Well-known member
I would be surprised if the onboard DRAM video's framebuffer was cache mapped. That would mean both that under normal circumstances w/ a 256K L2 cache that only a small chunk of the framebuffer resided in cache and the rest in DRAM and also that the entire L2 cache is constantly and always taken up by framebuffer data and not available for much else.
 
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