Subject: Re: quadra 630
To: None <chad@huskeralum.com>
From: Colin Wood <cwood@ichips.intel.com>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 06/24/1998 23:42:59
Chad J McQuinn wrote:
> 
> Hello all. First, my apologies if this information is addressed in an online
> FAQ somewhere, but I tried and could not find it. I have a couple of questions
> about the port
> 
> 1) I see that the Quadra 630 is pretty much fully supported...pretty much,
> except for the IDE drive it ships with. Is this still the case, or has this
> been added since the last faqs were updated?

This is still pretty much the case (unless someone has done this without
telling me :-)

> My main concern is to get a drive
> of _some_ kind working; I see that "onboard" SCSI is supported; I'm not totally
> familiar with the terminology, but since the Q630 only has one SCSI bus, I'm
> assuming this refers to both internal and external devices. Is that correct? So
> I could get a cheapo SCSI-external and have NetBSD working on the 630?

You can get an external SCSI device, and it should work just fine.  I
don't think there is anything "onboard" about the SCSI system on the
machine status page, tho (the category should just be "SCSI" or something
similar....

> 2) Ethernet card support--the Q630 has (I think) a LC-style PDS slot. Is there
> an ethernet card that works in this slot under NetBSD?

Ummm...I'm pretty sure this is still unsupported in 1.3.2, but I don't
know about -current.  I know that work was being done on this, but I don't
know how far it managed to get.  Anyone?

> 3) The reason I ask is that I would like to use my old Q630 as an IP router,
> basically. I'm doing that now with my pmac running linux; I assume that the
> setup would be similar (and possible) under NetBSD?

In general, yes (I've got a small LAN at home, using my Q700 as the
router).

> 4) No flamewars, please, this is an honest question. It seems that the mac68k
> ports for Linux, NetBSD, and OpenBSD are all pretty much at the same
> state (some things work, some don't)...can anyone give me compelling reasons to
> use one over the other? Things to take into account are the machine, a Quadra
> 630, and that I already have quite a bit of experience with Linux, on PC and
> PPC. I wouldn't need a whole lot of software for the Q630, just networking
> stuff msotly. Maybe a mail or http server, and I'm pretty sure apache has been
> ported to m68k.

Well, I'd say the BSD's certainly support more machines than MacLinux (it
seems to have stalled once again).  I doubt your machine would be
supported under MacLinux at all (unless something has changed recently).
As for OpenBSD vs. NetBSD, I find the NetBSD/mac68k community is probably
a bit more organized than the OpenBSD/mac68k community, and development is
more active on the mac68k kernel under NetBSD.  Other than that, take a
look at the web pages and see what you think.

I hope this helps some.

Later.

-- 
Colin Wood                                 cwood@ichips.intel.com
Component Design Engineer - PMD                 Intel Corporation
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I speak only on my own behalf, not for my employer.