[9fans] nubus macs

[9fans] nubus macs

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

One of my neighbours on the dock has a very unused Powerbook 1400c  
that I can probably swap for a case of beer.  In the realm of ppc  
ports, has there been any attempt to make P9 run on a nubus (or  
whatever it's called) PPC mac?  This thing would be a sweet little  
mobile terminal if it would be made to work.  A cursory scan of the  
list archives doesn't make me hopeful, though.

--lyndon

Re: [9fans] nubus macs

[Jack Johnson]

On 10/16/05, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:
> One of my neighbours on the dock has a very unused Powerbook 1400c
> that I can probably swap for a case of beer.  In the realm of ppc
> ports, has there been any attempt to make P9 run on a nubus (or
> whatever it's called) PPC mac?

It looks like that PowerBook is support by Linux, MkLinux and possibly
NetBSD, so it might be a good candidate for a plan9ports box.

Not perfect, but at least you know your NIC will work. ;)

-Jack

Re: [9fans] nubus macs

[Ben Huntsman]

Apple tends to do things strangely, and the PPC laptop you describe,  
happens to be an Old World system, which means that if it even has  
OpenFirmware at all, it's the old buggy version 2 or less.  Just  
because some Linux variant boots on the thing doesn't mean P9 will  
run on it.  For starters, you'd have to write a boot loader specific  
to it pretty much from scratch.
Have a look at Vita Nuova's Inferno distribution, which might have  
some examples of how to boot from OF on PPC hardware... and Inferno  
and P9 are sufficiently similar that you shouldn't have to shoehorn  
too much...

Good luck, and let me know if you get anywhere... I have a bunch of  
similar Old World mac hardware sitting around too

-Ben

On Oct 16, 2005, at 10:32 PM, Jack Johnson wrote:

> On 10/16/05, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:
>
>> One of my neighbours on the dock has a very unused Powerbook 1400c
>> that I can probably swap for a case of beer.  In the realm of ppc
>> ports, has there been any attempt to make P9 run on a nubus (or
>> whatever it's called) PPC mac?
>>
>
> It looks like that PowerBook is support by Linux, MkLinux and possibly
> NetBSD, so it might be a good candidate for a plan9ports box.
>
> Not perfect, but at least you know your NIC will work. ;)
>
> -Jack
>