Re: Problems installing OBSD 3.4 on IIsi

Guys, I can give you an empirical answer for my IIsi.  :)

Last night I located a copy of SoftFPU on an old CDR of Mac 
shareware/freeware from back in the day of 68k Macs. :)

The installer worked.  As a matter of fact, I started installing all of 
the obsd 3.4 packages on my IIsi.  It has taken about 13 hours.  This 
install is to a 1GB Jazz disk since I didn't have enough space on the 
internal disk.

The only issue I've had with the Jazz disk is that Booter ejects it when 
it says "Bye Bye" right before it executes the kernel.  I modified the 
Driver settings for the Jazz disk to not eject the drive and tried again.

The last thing I saw on the screen is some memory range info, then 
"Done" and "Bootstrapping the pmap system" and it stays there (left it 
alone for a few hours, no change.)  So I take it this is because the FPU?

To summarize incase the person who maintains the Install.mac68k wants to 
add this information:

The IIsi requires a 68882 FPU to be installed in the PDS (Processor 
Direct Slot).  This FPU is provided as part of the PDS to NuBus card, 
and some PDS Ethernet controllers (mine came with an empty socket.)  If 
you don't have an FPU, you can use the old shareware SoftFPU, and this 
will allow you to run the Installer - but won't be able to boot.

I would also add the following info as well about the IIcx in addition 
to requiring the Mode32 extension:  "The IIcx does NOT have an FPU, nor 
does it have a PDS slot, or a socket for an FPU.  (It might work if you 
can get an 030+FPU or 040 accelerator card, but I've no idea about it.)"

A long time ago, I built a IIcx Hackintosh.  There was a book about 10 
years ago named "Build your own Macintosh and Save a Bundle."  I did 
with a IIcx motherboard from someone who had upgraded to a IIci.  (A 
hackintosh is a Mac motherboard inside a hacked PC case with a modified 
PC power supply and third party devices such as ram, hard drive, video 
card, floppy, etc.)  

Anyway, as part of my trying to get the IIsi to work, I thought I'd dig 
up the old beastie and see if I could harvest the FPU out of it. (Yes, I 
know it would be unlikely since the IIcx/si have different clock speeds, 
but I thought I'd try anyway, on the off chance that it would work.)   I 
didn't see any PDS slot, didn't see any socket for the FPU, didn't see 
any slots other than the 3 NuBUS slots and something for a new ROM 
SIMM.  It might be possible that something was built for the ROM SIMM 
slot, but I highly doubt it.



Otto Moerbeek wrote:

>On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, Hugo Villeneuve wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Well mac68k.html is not very clear about the FPU thing. The first
>>paragraph seems to imply it isn't neccessary but later on in the
>>Suported Hardware section, a FPU is required.
>>
>>And then, there isn't much help of where the FPU needs to be for
>>it to be supported.
>>
>>    
>>
Agreed.  While information on various Macintosh models are available 
online, it would be worth it to list any required hardware which may not 
ship with that machine by default - such as the FPU as part of the 
Install 68k doc.  That way if someone (like me) finds a junked old Mac 
and thinks "Hmmm, maybe I can throw OpenBSD on this beast and get some 
use out of it" they'll know for sure one way or another.  :)

>As far as my hardware knowledge goes, the FPU is "directly connected" to
>the main processor, there is not much choice on how to do it, There has to
>be some PDS slot or existing socket on the main board to put the FPU in.  
>Sometimes the FPU socket is found on a PDS card that also has some other
>function, like ethernet card.
>  
>
Yes - this is correct as the FPU needs to be on the same address/data 
memory bus as the main CPU, so it can't live on a NuBus card (unless 
that NuBus card contains an accelerated CPU, plus it's own RAM sockets 
and some extension which switches to the CPU on the card (and in doing 
so disables the motherboard one.)

>>Anyway, I have a Quadra 650 since 2 weeks now. I might move the
>>hard-drive over to my LC II just to prove software FPU is working
>>or not.
>>    
>>
>
>That would be nice to try.