Re: free miboot - was Re: got quik working with OldWorld G3 Beige 233MHz
On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 01:54:53AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote: Let me see if I've got this right... [ Massive snip ] Yes, that looks accurate to me. I don't think that alternative (a) is going to happen. There just isn't the critical mass to get such a project off the ground. You'll note that I haven't done it, either. :) If I do ever work on this, I'll probably do it for the 68k platform, and make it compatible with ppc only if it's convenient. It would be nice to be able to make a bootable CD for 68k and oldworld ppc macs. It's way down on my list, tho. Personally, I think alternative (b) is not viable either -- it's just too much pain for anyone to put up with long-term -- though there are undoubtedly folks out there who will try it for a while Well, I have quik on my 7600. However, I should admit that I didn't have any choice on that when I originally installed linux on it. It's even still got some ancient system on it using glibc 1.99. Maybe I should pull it out some time and install something modern. before they give up. Fortunately, alternative (c) is a workable compromise between pain (having to keep and use floppies, and replace them when they wear out) and living with your principles. I tend to agree. Brad Boyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: free miboot - was Re: got quik working with OldWorld G3 Beige 233MHz
On Sat, 2004-10-30 at 06:54, Rick Thomas wrote: snip /snip ROM compatible disk and CD drivers. b) They can put up with the vagaries of Open firmware and quik for their particular hardware. snip /snip Personally, I think alternative (b) is not viable either -- it's just too much pain for anyone to put up with long-term -- though there are undoubtedly folks out there who will try it for a while before they give up. Fortunately, alternative (c) is a workable snip /snip Now my question is, why isn't it possible to get this more stable? (guess wich group I'm in) Is it just that the apple OF isn't stable or is quik not stable? I understand apple OF is different on pretty much every oldworld ppc but it should still be possible to find the workaround for every different one and once it's working it should keep working doesn't it? Greetz, Seb. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: free miboot - was Re: got quik working with OldWorld G3 Beige 233MHz
On Saturday, October 30, 2004, at 06:07 AM, Sebastiaan Molenaar wrote:
On Sat, 2004-10-30 at 06:54, Rick Thomas wrote:
snip /snip
ROM compatible disk and CD drivers. b) They can put up with the
vagaries of Open firmware and quik for their particular hardware.
snip /snip
Personally, I think alternative (b) is not viable either -- it's
just too much pain for anyone to put up with long-term -- though
there are undoubtedly folks out there who will try it for a while
before they give up. Fortunately, alternative (c) is a workable
snip /snip
Now my question is, why isn't it possible to get this more stable?
(guess wich group I'm in)
Is it just that the apple OF isn't stable or is quik not stable?
A bit of both.
I understand apple OF is different on pretty much every oldworld ppc
but it should still be possible to find the workaround for every
different
one and once it's working it should keep working doesn't it?
Indeed, the BSD folks have done exactly that. Quik is their
preferred boot-loader for OldWorld Macs. They have a huge table
with each model of Mac and the particular workarounds/patches for
that model to make its OF boot via quik.
To my mind, the fundamental problem is that patches to Open
Firmware, once made, don't last. OF patches reside in the PRAM.
If you ever boot MacOS{8,9} on a patched machine you will have to
clear the PRAM and thereby loose all your patches. Also, the PRAM
can be cleared by a power failure if your PRAM battery has run
down -- a common problem on older machines. If the patches get
lost, you have to re-patch, which can be a pain if your machine has
the kind of OF that wants a terminal on the serial port.
That said, I have two old 6500 PowerMacs that boot via quik and
have been running that way for over four years. They are sitting
in my machine room on a diesel-backed UPS and haven't been rebooted
more than a half-dozen times in those four years. I've had to
re-patch one of them a couple of times. It's not fun, but it's not
impossible either. Fortunately, neither of these machines is
mission critical -- they can afford to be offline for a week or
so if they loose their PRAM patches while I'm on vacation.
Rick
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Re: free miboot - was Re: got quik working with OldWorld G3 Beige 233MHz
On Fri, Oct 29, 2004 at 01:45:10PM -0400, Rick_Thomas wrote:
Booting from floppy every time is a pain -- especially since floppies
tend to go bad (wear out, actually) over time. But it's a possible
option in the rare case when you haven't got access to any MacOS{89}
install CD.
But that's a rare situation. The most common situation is that you will
have a MacOS{8.x,9.x} CD on hand (or can buy one one cheap on e-bay).
As long as you have the official tools, and use them to partition your
drive, you already get the drivers and patches installed. And as long
as you don't accidentally delete them with the partitioning tools in
the installer, it's irrelevant.
In that case you can use BootX, and don't need (free or otherwise)
miboot unless you're a free software absolutist. Though, come to think
of it, even the absolutist will either have to live with quik's quirks
or allow Apple's non-free drivers to take up space on their system
disk. (If it helps, you can just think of them as firmware!)
Even in this case, someone would have to write the regular disk drivers.
The patches are just fixes to allow the regular drivers to work at boot
time. Apple is much less likely to let us redistribute those unless we
write it ourselves. They have documented it enough for someone to do
it, since third party drivers were relatively common at one point.
I guess I'd support the effort of building a clean-room free version of
miboot, just to keep the absolutists happy (though I'm not of that
persuasion myself) if I was sure that it *would* keep them happy...
Yes, but that by itself would not be enough to start from nothing and
install. It's messier than it seems like it should be due to the
on-disk driver headache.
To support starting from just a Debian CD on all oldworld boxes as well
as install a bootable system, we need to do the following:
1) Write disk drivers for SCSI and IDE (both HD and CD-ROM)
2) License the patches from Apple (or somehow reverse engineer them)
3) Add support to mac-fdisk to install the drivers and patches
4) Fix miboot to be truly free.
5) Add a miboot installer (similar to ybin/mkofboot)
On the other hand, if you only want to use it on floppies, only #4
(and maybe #5) are needed.
Brad Boyer
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Re: free miboot - was Re: got quik working with OldWorld G3 Beige 233MHz
On Friday, October 29, 2004, at 04:53 PM, Brad Boyer wrote:
To support starting from just a Debian CD on all oldworld boxes as well
as install a bootable system, we need to do the following:
1) Write disk drivers for SCSI and IDE (both HD and CD-ROM)
2) License the patches from Apple (or somehow reverse engineer them)
3) Add support to mac-fdisk to install the drivers and patches
4) Fix miboot to be truly free.
5) Add a miboot installer (similar to ybin/mkofboot)
On the other hand, if you only want to use it on floppies, only #4
(and maybe #5) are needed.
Let me see if I've got this right...
The world is divided into three types of people:
0) People with hardware other than OldWorld Powermacs. I will
ignore this group, except to say that, according to the latest
popularity contest results, they constitute over 98% of the users
of Debian software.
1) Of those who have an OldWorld PowerMac (or clone) the large
majority will also have a copy of the MacOS{8.x,9.x} install CD
that came with the machine (or that they bought cheap on e-bay, or
bought expensive from Apple when the world was new and we were all
very young...) and will be willing to use it to install MacOS so
that they can use BootX as their default boot loader.
2) A vocal but tiny minority of absolutists who are unwilling to
have any non-free software (above the level of unavoidable firmware
ROMs) on their machines.
3) Those who are opposed to non-free software or for other reasons
(such as disk space) don't want to have MacOS on their machines,
but are willing to at least have their disks initialized and
partitioned by the Apple Disk Utility software. (Personal opinion:
this group is likely somewhat larger than group 2 but still much
smaller than group 1.)
Group 1 has no problem. They can use BootX to start up the D-I
installer, and they can continue to use BootX as their default
boot-loader. The fact that BootX is not free is not a problem for
these folks. MacOS isn't free either! All they need is good
directions in the manual for how to do it.
Eliminating group 1 leaves us with (as a guess) somewhat less than
0.1% of debian users in groups 2 and 3. Still, this represents
(guess) 5% of Debian OldWorld PowerMac users. And they are a vocal
bunch, for all their small numbers.
As Brad points out, group 3 needs only a clean-room free
implementation of miboot and they are off and running. They can
boot from floppies to run the D-I installer -- either via the
network or via CDs, and use the (proposed) free miboot as their
default boot-loader from disk after installation is complete. That
is: after the initial installation the Apple drivers on their disk
will be enough to allow them to use miboot to boot from that disk.
They will need good clear directions in the manual for how to make
boot floppies and use them to start up D-I.
We're now down to group 2 -- the (at a guess) less than 0.01% of
hard-core absolutists who will not allow *any* non-free software to
touch their machines. These folks have a few alternatives: a) They
can implement their own free boot software, including Apple Boot
ROM compatible disk and CD drivers. b) They can put up with the
vagaries of Open firmware and quik for their particular hardware.
c) They can use the (proposed) free miboot but only from
floppies -- meaning that they must forever boot their machine with
a floppy -- installation and post-install production.
I don't think that alternative (a) is going to happen. There just
isn't the critical mass to get such a project off the ground.
Personally, I think alternative (b) is not viable either -- it's
just too much pain for anyone to put up with long-term -- though
there are undoubtedly folks out there who will try it for a while
before they give up. Fortunately, alternative (c) is a workable
compromise between pain (having to keep and use floppies, and
replace them when they wear out) and living with your principles.
Hope this helps!
Rick
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