Re: NetBSD on Mac IIfx and GNU/NetBSD

[Mac User <userm57%yahoo.com@localhost>]

On 1/27/16 10:57 AM, Robert Swindells wrote:
> ...
> 
>> Meanwhile, I was able to get Debian 3.1 (the last official
>> Debian version that supports mac68k) to work on the IIfx, but
>> I would like to be able to run NetBSD 7.x since it's current
>> (Debian 3.1 uses a very old Linux 2.2 kernel).
> 
> Does Debian work with your video card ?
> 
> Robert Swindells
> 

Yes, at least for text.  On the IIfx, Penguin (the Linux
booter) complains that it can't turn off interrupts on the
video card, and there's a two-minute delay before the boot
screen comes up, but otherwise it works great. I probably
won't try X with only 32 MB memory. ADB keyboard also works,
serial ports do not (though I haven't tried compiling a
custom kernel yet -- it looks like I might be able to use
a 2.6.x kernel if I customize it).

Here's my assessment of how Debian 3.1 compares to NetBSD 7.0:

1) NetBSD network access seems faster (250 KB/sec on an FTP
transfer compared with 180 KB/sec with Debian). Could be that
Debian doesn't properly support the Asante 10/100 card.

2) NetBSD SCSI support is better on both the IIfx and LC III.
Debian 3.1 was unstable with two or more SCSI disks -- phase
errors, timeouts. A custom Linux kernel may help here. An
unsupported Debian 4.0 wouldn't boot on the IIfx (hangs) and
wouldn't install on the LC III due to SCSI errors while
booting the 2.6 install kernel.

3) NetBSD does a better job accessing the hardware clock on
the IIfx; Debian says the hardware clock can't be accessed "by
any known method".

4) The Debian 3.1 install hung while detecting the Asante 10/100
network card on the IIfx, but an installation done on an LC III
and moved to the IIfx works fine. NetBSD doesn't yet run on the
IIfx.

5) Debian seems to have better package support (though I'm not
as familiar with NetBSD as I am with GNU/Linux). With "apt-get",
dependencies are resolved automatically (so for example I can
say "apt-get install gcc" and Debian will automatically offer
to download and install all packages upon which gcc depends).

6) Boot times, rc scripts, logins and some commands such as
"ps aux" and "su" are much, much faster in Debian 3.1 than in
NetBSD 7.0.

7) Debian stopped supporting mac68k with 3.1 (their current
version is 8.3), while NetBSD deserves credit for continuing
to support mac68k in their latest version.

-Stan