On Fri, 10 Aug 2001, David Dierauer wrote:

> I am looking into getting a broadband connection for my home network,
> and would like to set up a router using a *nix machine.  I've got two
> 68K machines just sitting around (a PowerBook 540 and an LCIII), and
> it would be ideal if one of them could be set up for the task.

Assuming your broadband connection comes in via ethernet, wouldn't you
need two ethernet interfaces to function as a router?  I don't think
either the powerbook 540 or the LCIII can support more than one ethernet.

If you are going to route packets back out over the same interface they
come in on then maybe one is enough, but that doesn't sound like the best
idea to me.

> but I'm not sure I completely understand it. I see that the LCIII is
> in the "fully working" category, but am not sure what "needed" means
> in the fpu column. Does that mean I need to add FPU to the machine to
> make it possible to run netBSD on it?

AFAIK FPU emulation works on 68030 machines, so you should not absolutely
have to add a 68882 FPU, although there may be some quirk on the LCIII.
The best way to find out about this is just to install NetBSD and see what
happens.

> If so, it sounds like I'm out of luck, since I also have to add
> ethernet to it to use it as a router, and there's only one open slot.

It's possible you can add a 68882 without using the PDS slot.  Check to
see if there is a chip socket on the motherboard for the 68882.  If so you
can probably stick one in there and still have the PDS slot free.

> I also note that the PB540 is in the category "partially working",
> but I don't have any sense as to what the practical implications of
> that are. It seems fpu-related, but would that affect its performance
> as a router?

Yes and No.  FPU emulation on 68lc040 cpus is so broken that user mode
barely works.  Processes randomly segfault so often that bring the machine
all the way up to multi-user mode is a crap shoot, and on my machine fails
to come all the way up about 80% of the time.

If you can get far enough to configure the kernel for routing, however (ip
addresses, routing table, ip forwarding, etc) then it should work fine as
a router for a long time because the kernel is compiled -msoft-float and
will run in kernel mode pretty solidly.

> Additional Qs:
> 1) If the PB seems more promising: it has built-in ethernet, but I
> don't have an AAUI transceiver for it yet; does it matter what kind I
> get?

No.  Get one that matches your media type (10baseT, etc)

> 2) If the LCIII seems more promising: I'd need to get an ethernet
> card for it: suggestions on brands and/or inexpensive sources of
> cards? (I'd also need additional memory.)

For cards check Ebay (of course don't bid unless the netbsd web site says
it's supported)

For memory I've had good luck with www.memoryx.net; they specialise in
Macintosh and Sun Microsystems memory.
-- 
Tod McQuillin