I wanted to report my observations related to getting this machine, an IBM
RS/6000 model 860 up and running. This machine for those unfamiliar is a
PReP architecture laptop that IBM made in 1996, it is equivalent in many
respects to the thinkpad 850.
some hardware pics, and information:
http://www.cs.fiu.edu/~ayanic01/rs6k
http://www.phreakzone.com/linuxppc
I initially got a linux kernel on this machine by downloading a prebu$ kernel from the net, it was a 2.2.15 kernel that was built for IBM RS/6000 43P model 7248, this was the only kernel that did not hang on the ncr53c8xx scsi driver. I have the built-in CD, so with this kernel I had downloaded from the net + a base ppc-debian image I made myself a PReP bootable cd.
I then fdisked the machine, created a PReP boot partition, type 41, 8$ in size would be good, created swap and root partitions, and had a bootable system. However, no 2.2 kernel I tried to build myself ever worked, even with all the ppc patches. I believe now that I had 2 issues related to scsi not working. I used cfdisk to create my partitions and this did not delete or even make me aware of an AIX partition label on the disk, so I was getting unable to open device 08:02 or something to that effect. The other error was one where the scsi driver would loop and you would just see it fill the screen counting up. I have been told that the ncr53c8xx=save:y is an option that gets past the looping problem with this driver. I also tried the 2.4.0test kernels, as this was where the development cycle was at the time. After no luck with either 2.4.0test or 2.2.*+ppc patches, except for the kernel I downloaded from the net, my power supply died.. project put away.
fast forward to now, I borrowed a power supply from a thinkpad here at work, copied over 2.4.18 kernel, pcmcia-cs 3.1.33 and modutils, burnt to cd of course...and a _BIT_ of help from irc.openprojects.net and #mklinux ...
Kernel Config notes: Notes, you must enable CONFIG_ISA in your .config because it is a ISA-PCMCIA bridge: edit the file /usr/src/linux/arch/ppc/config.in (or wherever your kernel sources are) and change (line 132) 'define_bool CONFIG_ISA n' to 'bool "ISA bus support" CONFIG_ISA' (of course you could also set 'define_bool CONFIG_ISA y') then run 'make config' / 'make menuconfig' and enable "ISA bus support" Turn off cardbus support only use pcmcia-cs for the utilities, not the drivers. and dont enable carbus support here either. in my pcmcia/config.opts I have: include port 0x100-0x4ff, port 0x800-0x8ff, port 0xc00-0xcff include memory 0xc0000-0xfffff include memory 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff, memory 0x60000000-0x60ffffff include port 0x1000-0x17ff include port 0xa00-0xaff I exclude irq 4 and 7 The parameters for the i82365 PCIC_OPTS="do_scan=0 i365_base=0x3e0 irq_list=3,5,9,14" from here --> http://www.amberdata.demon.co.uk/carolina/ I have had success with a linksys PCMPC100 V2 10/100 pcmcia ethernet adapter, pcnet_cs, note, it is a 16 bit bus, so 100mbit performance is shoddy! As well I have gotten the Orinoco wireless adapter working, which is 11mbps 802.11b card :)
I am using CONFIG_FB_VGA16=y and use fbset -xres 1024 -yres 512 with consolechars alt-8x8 to have a very nice text console. (should this be able to go to a higher yres?)
NOTE: I use the SYM53C8XX_2 driver in kernel 2.4.18 with no special parameters passed to it!!!
I have apt-get updated to the latest debian-ppc unstable. All appears to be working well, looking forward to having X working on it. Still testing stability, as I have had hard lockups, after a few hours of it just sitting around, it being pretty old hardware and a laptop, it might not be able to handle the uptime even if running AIX (overheating?).
TODO and figure out: cs4232 sound, I have not tried too much yet with this 'modprobe cs4232 irq=10 io=0x830 dma2=6' I have not tried ALSA yet.. this seems to work, although it is a bit underpowered for playing mp3 i guess.. i was hearing some distortion.. XFree:I have had no success with X yet, I had an old hacked together 3.3.6 XFree that ran in horrible res. i got from: --> ftp://ftp.task.mcst.ru/pub/TP850/ (some stuff for the TP850 - the X server works on TP860 w. XFree86 3.3.6 , but only 640x480)