by Yesterday we installed LinuxPPC (kernel 2.1.24) successfully on a Umax
Pulsar.
Here i want to tell about our experiances, maybe it is interesting for
someone, because the Umax Pulsar is marked with a ? in the offical
supported-harware webpage.
Hardware:
---------
Umax Pulsar
604e 233MHz
ATY XClaim VR Videocard
standard PC monitor + adapter
We bought this machine in germany, maybe this machine has another name in
other countries.
AFAIK new information:
----------------------
- OF 1.0.5
- output-device /bandit/ATY,XCLAIMVR
Installation:
-------------
We used the "Installation & user guide for LinuxPPC R4".
As long as we didn't knew better we treat this machine as a 9600 with ATI
videocard (AFAIK the Pulsar is electronically the same as 9600).
1) we inizialized the Harddisk as recommended with "drive setup"
2) downloaded "Boot Variables"
3) played (tried to) with Open Firmware
a) start with opt - cmd - O - F
-> nothing happens, cause OF waits at the printerport
b) set input-device to kbd
set output-device to /bandit/ATY,XCLAIMVR
(after a long time of trial and error)
c) now we get into the OF dialog -> OF 1.0.5
4) we set the boot-device to fd:installer.coff
5) started from floppy as recommanded
6) now we made the installation via ftp
HINT!! do use us keyboard layout not german -> installer crashed, cause we
german keyboard, but this did not worked)
Hint!! do use the first partion for root (not swap), cause OF has problems
to boot from a special partion, so it uses the first it can find.
These two problems cost us hours!!
^ SCSI -ID ^ use first bootable partion (you whould
expect 5)
^ overall partion #5 ^^ a resolution our monitor can handle
8) when starting, the OF had sometimes timing problems with the harddisk, a
reset always helped.
9) the installed packages looked ok - most is new, for example:
- Kernel 2.1.24 from Jan 1997 - but seems to be stabil
- sendmail 8.8.1 - 8.9.1 current
- egcs-2.90.25 980302 (egcs-1.0.2 prerelease) - egcs-1.0.3a current
The rest of the installation was straight forward, our machine runs with
kde now =))) The Installer is a bit ticklish for a Macuser (like DOS), but
if used with caution ok.
+) in a next step we made some stresstests - till now very positiv
++) now we think about compiling a newer kernel, but which newer kernel is
reliable and stabil?
+++) in the next step we whould like to make some banchmarks and test some
real simulations out of the theoretical physics and compare them with a
Pentium II 233 with Linux.
Pitz
--
www: http://www.uni-konstanz.de/studis/fs/pitz/
PGP-Key: http://www.uni-konstanz.de/studis/fs/pitz/pgp.html
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