Re: NetBSD 8.0 on a Mac LC III

David Riley <[email protected]> Wed, 10 Oct 2018 14:16:46 -0400
Newsgroups	gmane.os.netbsd.ports.mac68k
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
On Oct 4, 2018, at 7:13 PM, [email protected] wrote:
> 
> I'd be happy to help with testing.  There's a SCSI2SD card (uses
> a micro SD card up to 64 GB) that works pretty well on 68k Macs,
> though I've had some problems with it on faster systems (such as
> PowerMac 61xx). The SCSI2SD also didn't work using the traditional
> method to install NetBSD (Mkfs in Mac OS just didn't see it for
> some reason); I didn't test it with sysinst.  But it works ok an
> a IIfx running Mac OS and Debian 3.1.

I'm familiar with SCSI2SD! Being in the vintage computing community, it's a lifesaver for a lot of us, not just Mac users; it also supports weird block lengths and other things. However, being *also* an embedded developer, I see a lot of things I'd like to improve on it (most notably, it doesn't do sync SCSI) and I'd also like to be able to map iSCSI LUNs because I'm a lot more confident in the long-term longevity of my SAN array than I am of a consumer SD card.  I have a theoretical design for an ESP32-based one with a tiny CPLD for handling the SCSI physical interface, but haven't had the time to prototype anything.

> Linux 2.x seems to get around 200 KB/s on the Mac LC III; Linux 4.x
> gets around 100 KB/s. NetBSD 8.0 installed from CD at about 25 KB/s,
> though that included decompressing the tar files.

Yeah, I've found recent NetBSD to be intolerably slow even on my PowerMacs, mostly on anything that touches the filesystem much; I suspect there are some paths under the hood that have gotten a lot longer in recent years.  Profiling that has also been on my queue for quite a while.

> I have an Asante EN/SC and could help with testing of that, too,
> though I'm not aware of any drivers for it (Linux or NetBSD).  And
> the lack of documentation would likely be a problem.

Mostly I'm interested in seeing what's inside. If you've the inclination to take it apart and photograph the innards, that would be a help; the rest of it, I was going to reverse engineer from the Mac driver, because I have a copy of MacNosyII and know what to do with it. :-)  If the innards contain some reasonably standard processor, I'd love to be able to dump the firmware for reverse engineering as well (I also have a copy of IDA Pro).

Herb Johnson (of http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/mac.html) is a member of my vintage computer group, I might see if he also has an EN/SC that he'd be able to sell me at our holiday gathering.


- Dave
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