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Lyubomir Grigorov | 4 Jan 2012 10:17
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7028-6E1 (pSeries 610) and how to burn cd

Hello, I stumbled upon this mail list and I hope to get some clarification. I 
have the following machine, with AIX 5.1 currently. I have AIX 5.3 ready to be 
installed, but I rather install an open-source OS given that the little 
available foss packages for 5.3 are outdated.

This is my machine:
- IBM pSeries 610 (7028-6E1)
- 333 MHz POWER3-II 64-bit processor, 4 MB of L2 cache (most likely not the 
SMP  version, I forgot)
- 512 MB of ECC SDRAM
- 18 GB Ultra3 SCSI HDD
- Two 10/100 Ethernet (IEEE 802.3 compliant)
- CD-ROM
- Floppy
- Tape Drive (I disconnected it, don't need it)

I am not a major fan of GNU/Linux. I checked with FreeBSD, but their progress 
with ppc is so far mainly restricted to Apple computers. So, I am turning to 
the NetBSD, famous for being able to be installed on almost anything. :)

Question 1: I know Tim requested this hardware, so I would like to test and 
help with what I can remotely. At this point, is it supported?

Question 2: How can I burn the ofppc .iso? Using Brasero autodetect type it 
tells me it cannot identify it. I had no problem burning the Debian 6.0.3 
powerpc .iso, just burn and boot.
Can you tell my how to burn the NetBSD ofppc .iso so I can test?

Cheers.
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nello martuscielli | 4 Jan 2012 12:32
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Re: 7028-6E1 (pSeries 610) and how to burn cd

On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Lyubomir Grigorov
<lyubomir <at> grigorovl.eu> wrote:
_cut__
> Question 2: How can I burn the ofppc .iso? Using Brasero autodetect type it
> tells me it cannot identify it. I had no problem burning the Debian 6.0.3
> powerpc .iso, just burn and boot.
> Can you tell my how to burn the NetBSD ofppc .iso so I can test?
>

from command line of your Debian box (i guess you have cdrkit)

# wodim -v dev=/dev/yourcdburner ofppc.iso

best,
nello
--
my blog: http://linuxpowerpc.blogspot.com
--
Power Mac G4 AGP 450MHz - CRUX PPC (32bit)
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Frank Wille | 4 Jan 2012 15:26
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Re: 7028-6E1 (pSeries 610) and how to burn cd

On Wed, 4 Jan 2012 01:17:54 -0800
Lyubomir Grigorov <lyubomir <at> grigorovl.eu> wrote:

> This is my machine:
> - IBM pSeries 610 (7028-6E1)
> - 333 MHz POWER3-II 64-bit processor, 4 MB of L2 cache (most likely
> not the SMP  version, I forgot)
> [...]
> Question 1: I know Tim requested this hardware, so I would like to
> test and help with what I can remotely. At this point, is it supported?

The CPU should be supported. It is the same as in the 7044-270, which
Tim booted successfully. No idea about the rest of the hardware.

Note that Tim only managed to net-boot in single user mode, so I
wouldn't expect much. Booting from CD will probably fail.

But a test would be very interesting.

--

-- 
Frank Wille
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Tim Rightnour | 4 Jan 2012 16:24
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Re: 7028-6E1 (pSeries 610) and how to burn cd


On 04-Jan-2012 Frank Wille wrote:
> Note that Tim only managed to net-boot in single user mode, so I
> wouldn't expect much. Booting from CD will probably fail.
> 
> But a test would be very interesting.

In theory, it should work just fine.  The 7044-270 was fully supported in
multiuser, except for SMP.  There might be a little bit of bitrot on the port,
which I intend to try and get to soon.  I would be very interested in seeing a
test boot of that 7028.  CD should work, in theory, if not, netboot.

The POWER4, RS64 and above chips are not yet supported.  It's on my list, but
in the near term, I'm working on fixing prep booting right now.

---
Tim Rightnour <root <at> garbled.net>
NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/
Genecys: Open Source 3D MMORPG: http://www.genecys.org/
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..I'd rather be coding ASM! | 4 Jan 2012 23:07
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Re: 7028-6E1 (pSeries 610) and how to burn cd


Tim, I'd be extremely interested in helping out with an RS64 port. I've a 
couple of AS/400's at home I mostly potter about in i5R3 and i5r2 on.

Al.

On Wed, 4 Jan 2012, Tim Rightnour wrote:

>
> On 04-Jan-2012 Frank Wille wrote:
>> Note that Tim only managed to net-boot in single user mode, so I
>> wouldn't expect much. Booting from CD will probably fail.
>>
>> But a test would be very interesting.
>
> In theory, it should work just fine.  The 7044-270 was fully supported in
> multiuser, except for SMP.  There might be a little bit of bitrot on the port,
> which I intend to try and get to soon.  I would be very interested in seeing a
> test boot of that 7028.  CD should work, in theory, if not, netboot.
>
> The POWER4, RS64 and above chips are not yet supported.  It's on my list, but
> in the near term, I'm working on fixing prep booting right now.
>
> ---
> Tim Rightnour <root <at> garbled.net>
> NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/
> Genecys: Open Source 3D MMORPG: http://www.genecys.org/
>

--

--
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Tim Rightnour | 5 Jan 2012 00:01
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Re: 7028-6E1 (pSeries 610) and how to burn cd


In the very least, I'd say fire netbsd up on them and see where it explodes. 
After that, a dump of OFW would probably be useful.

I'd have to see where it went kaput before guessing on how hard it will be.

On 04-Jan-2012 ..I'd rather be coding ASM! wrote:
> Tim, I'd be extremely interested in helping out with an RS64 port. I've a 
> couple of AS/400's at home I mostly potter about in i5R3 and i5r2 on.

---
Tim Rightnour <root <at> garbled.net>
NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/
Genecys: Open Source 3D MMORPG: http://www.genecys.org/
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..I'd rather be coding ASM! | 5 Jan 2012 01:25
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Re: 7028-6E1 (pSeries 610) and how to burn cd


G'day Tim,

RS64 is pretty different to Power especially where the MMU is concerned. 
The boot process is nothing like RS/6000 prep or chrp platforms, there's 
no SMS on my machines, no serial console .. IPL control is via 
push-button menu, about 3 mins into the boot I get output on the 5250 
terminal emulator which is embedded on a twin-ax conroller, attached to a 
virtual dial-up modem on the windows controller machine side (in this case 
an old gateway laptop which runs the iSeries Access Software). It took me 
three years just to round up sufficient hardware (and the right hardware! 
*eyeroll*) and software and about 200+ brute-force attempts to install 
i5/OS. I still have little clue what I'm doing half the time.

If you wish I can send you soem screen shots of an install over the 
weekend, you'll see what I mean with this thing.

I have a quad northstar system at 262mhz with 1.8gb primary storage and a 
uniproc Pulsar at afair 450Mhz with 384mb primary storage. I've not got 
access to anything older like an A10. I also have another 9406-170 because 
they're as common as fleas on a dog and seem to pop up for 5-10$ on ebay. 
They're a uni-proc version of the quad machine and I found to be a good 
starting point. Mine has 896mb ram and 4x4gb disks.

On a side note, one thing I've been trying to find more info on is the way 
RS64 does memory management between primary and secondary store (chip 
memory vs DASD (disk)). If you find out anything to read on this I'd be 
keen as mustard to also see it. I initially wasted a few weeks trying to 
replace the only working disk which I naively thought was "a vanilla 2gb 
IBm SCA SCSI disk" with a nice 72gb 15krpm scsi disk (Quantum atlas III?).
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Tim Rightnour | 5 Jan 2012 11:13
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Re: 7028-6E1 (pSeries 610) and how to burn cd


On 05-Jan-2012 ..I'd rather be coding ASM! wrote:
> RS64 is pretty different to Power especially where the MMU is concerned. 
> The boot process is nothing like RS/6000 prep or chrp platforms, there's 
> no SMS on my machines, no serial console .. IPL control is via 
> push-button menu, about 3 mins into the boot I get output on the 5250 
> terminal emulator which is embedded on a twin-ax conroller, attached to a 
> virtual dial-up modem on the windows controller machine side

Ahhh.. ok.. yeah.. thats what I was afraid of. I knew the AS/400 machines were
different, but I kinda hoped in the back of my head IBM was lazy and just built
the same machines as the rs/6000 line and installed different software on them.
(like they do on IBM Virtual Tapes, for mainframes, they are actually bone
stock rs/6000's running a crazy version of AIX).  It sounds like they are
completely different internally.  That turns it into an entirely different ball
of wax.  I could give you hints on where to start, but I'm not familiar at all
with AS/400's, I've only seen them physically.  You would basically be starting
a whole new port of NetBSD.

As for the CPU itself, I'm aware they are a little bizzare, but in theory, they
should be pretty close to POWER3/POWER4.  I know AIX runs on them in 32-bit
mode, so they should support bridge mode like the P3 does.

If you think you are up for it.. I'd be glad to describe what the process would
be, and try to help you through it.  That all being said, it won't be easy. 
Especially without some form of console.  Thats kinda...err..yeah..  No serial
port?  Really? (I mean, does it at least *have* one?)

---
Tim Rightnour <root <at> garbled.net>
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..I'd rather be coding ASM! | 6 Jan 2012 02:07
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Re: 7028-6E1 (pSeries 610) and how to burn cd


G'day Tim,

Here's some meanderings and guerilla learning..

> Ahhh.. ok.. yeah.. thats what I was afraid of. I knew the AS/400 machines were
> different, but I kinda hoped in the back of my head IBM was lazy and just built
> the same machines as the rs/6000 line and installed different software on them.
> (like they do on IBM Virtual Tapes, for mainframes, they are actually bone
> stock rs/6000's running a crazy version of AIX).  It sounds like they are
> completely different internally.  That turns it into an entirely different ball
> of wax.  I could give you hints on where to start, but I'm not familiar at all
> with AS/400's, I've only seen them physically.  You would basically be starting
> a whole new port of NetBSD.

Yeah DEC did a similar thing with the old InfoServer machines. They were a 
stripped back CVAX (Might've been a mariah? someone correct me), ran a 
very hacked up VMS 5.x and later 6.x out of ROM and used to share CDROM 
drives out over DECnet/LAT.

Technically there's 3 generations of AS/400 much as I can tell. There's 
the original 48bit CISC machines. 64bit RS64 machines (Close tasmanian 
cousins of Power). Power/LPAR capable ones AS/400 aka iSeries. This all 
came after the original System/38 family as a compatible follow-on.

Also as far as "just built the same" goes they managed to elegantly dodge 
that bullet. I'm going to grossly over-simplify here but bear with me. Any 
executable image loaded within OS/400 (i5r3 in my case but I'll call it 
OS/400 to avoid confusion with apple/cisco products), anyway any 
executable image has two parts to it. One is a machine inspecific program
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Lyubomir Grigorov | 5 Jan 2012 06:39
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Re: 7028-6E1 (pSeries 610) and how to burn cd

SUCCESS!!!! I was able to boot into NetBSD! I needed to tweak Open Firmware, 
specifically:

0 > nvalias disk /pci <at> fef00000/scsi <at> c/sd <at> a,0:4
ok
0 > setenv boot-device /pci <at> fef00000/scsi <at> c/sd <at> a,0:4

This is thanks to the following website:
http://www.arbeitsplatzvernichtung-durch-outsourcing.de/marty44/ibmb50.html

You should include this information somewhere on the NetBSD page. The default 
boot-device was missing :4 (my 5th entry was /boot).

Below is  dmesg. Cheers.

LGIBM# dmesg
Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,
    2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
    The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
    The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.

NetBSD 5.1 (GENERIC) #0: Sat Nov  6 17:27:23 UTC 2010
        builds <at> b6.netbsd.org:/home/builds/ab/netbsd-5-1-
RELEASE/ofppc/201011061943Z-obj/home/buiC
Model: IBM,7028-6E1
total memory = 512 MB
avail memory = 481 MB
timecounter: Timecounters tick every 10.000 msec
bootpath: /pci <at> fef00000/scsi <at> c/sd <at> a,0/netbsd
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