Subject: RS/6000 info on diffs between 43P models...
From: Gary Shelton (Omega996@excite.com)
Date: Wed Feb 09 2000 - 09:03:27 MST
greetings:
I've read some of the discussions here in re: installation problems on
different RS/6000 boxen, particularly the "model 43P". Hopefully, I can shed
some light on some problems, and then of course, in the spirit of
reciprocity, post some problems of my own... :)
What people generally refer to as Model 43P 100, 120, or 133, are Models
7248-100, -120, or -133. These machines have very little in common with the
current 43P-140 or -150 that is being sold today. The biggest and most
important difference is that the 7248s are PReP, while the -140 and -150 are
CHRP. This is why the YDL boot instructions and boot images won't work on
the older machines.
It may be a moot point anyhow, at least for now, as I understand that the
integrated video adapter (S15 in IBMese, S3 864 for the rest of us) isn't
supported under the frame buffer device, and there's significant difficulty
in compiling the S3 server on ppc (though I don't know what that difficulty
is).
In any case, I spent the better part of yesterday hunting down boot images
that would work with PReP, and while I found them, I could not get them to
work with the YDL distribution (which I downloaded because YDL thoughtfully
provides an ISO - thanks very much for those of us on a high-speed but
password-restricted internet connection!).
There's a mini FAQ on installing linuxppc on the 7248 here -
http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~ingvarha/43p/1.html
, but i couldn't get it work. Now, it could be that there is a problem with
the CD I created from the ISO image, but my problem was that whether I
mounted the CD directly during install, or copied the files to my hard disk,
and then ran the installation from there, the installation always bombed at
the second stage part, complaining of running on a live file system.
The second problem I noted, which is not particularly YDL-centric, is that
there seems to be some kind of not-so-happy interaction between the on-board
NCR SCSI adapter on these older machines, and the IDE adapter. At least
there is a problem if one tries to install to a system with both types of
storage devices present. I used newer kernels (per some hints i found again
at linuxppc), but the truth of the matter seems that as long as an IDE
device is connected, you'll eventually get a timeout on the SCSI bus. remove
the ide device, and magically no more problems. Even using a boot kernel
without ide support won't work - you have to physically remove the ide drive
(or at least disconnect the power).
At this moment, I'm installating AIX 4.3 to an IDE drive on my 7248 to see
if there's going to be a problem under AIX (hoping that at least, in some
roundabout way, I can determine whether the problem is with linux or with
the firmware).
In any case, hope this info helps some people who've been struggling.
I know that one can pick up 7248's cheap - there's one reseller that's
selling 7248-133MHz machines with 128MB RAM, 2 2.2GB scsi drives and cdrom
for 525... sounds like a steal, but it would be more of a steal if we could
get linux running on these older machines.
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