Re: Sonnet G3 upgrades and YDL on a 6500


Subject: Re: Sonnet G3 upgrades and YDL on a 6500
From: L.B. Noire (noire@antisocial.com)
Date: Fri Jul 14 2000 - 11:23:52 MDT


> From: Mainh2o <h2o@hawaii.rr.com>
> But you actually got the g3/l2 to work? It just would not boot the IDE
> drive? Please let me know what you did to make that happen. Thanks

    I just bought a Sonnet Crescendo G3/L2 400/1MB for my PowerMac 6400/200
and now have it working with YDL 1.2. The 6400 is virtually identical to the
6500 but has a 40MHz bus instead of a 50MHz bus so my experience might be of
some use to you. It might not be the most elegant solution but it works and
gives me the option of booting Linux on startup.

    The problem with the G3/L2 upgrades on Alchemy motherboards is that the
L2CR information isn't getting passed properly to BootX. This can be resolved
by using the G3/G4 Cache Profiler 1.3 from PowerLogix. It can be downloaded
from <http://www.powerlogix.com/support/software.html>. This extension will
pass the necessary information onto BootX and allow you to boot Linux with the
G3/L2 card enabled.

    The tricky part is that you have to have the extensions load in the
correct order: (1) the G3 enabler, (2) the G3/G4 Profiler INIT, and then (3)
the BootX extension. I accomplished this by first changing the Sonnet
Processor Upgrade extension's filetype from "INIT" to "scri". Then I added
two nonstandard characters to the beginning of the name. (I don't know which
character it is since I just copied it from the beginning of the Conflict
Catcher extension.) I did this so the G3 enabler would boot before Conflict
Catcher and be the first thing the computer loaded. So the resulting filename
was "**Sonnet Processor Upgrade" where the "*"s are the mystery character.
:-) I'm using v1.4.4 of the Crescendo software.

    Then I installed the G3/G4 Profiler INIT from the PowerLogix software
package. It will boot second because of its filetype and name. Then in the
G3/G4 Cache Profiler application under the "Other" tab I checked the box
marked "Configure BootX L2CR on Restart".

    Finally I installed the BootX extension from BootX 1.2.2 package and left
it as it was originally named.

    The result of all this is that the G3 card gets enabled first by the
"Sonnet Processor Upgrade" extension, then the G3/G4 Profiler INIT loads and
will pass the L2CR info to BootX if necessary, and then the BootX extension
comes up and will ask if you want to boot into Mac OS or Linux. Choose Mac OS
and the rest of the extensions will march across your screen. Choose Linux
and - well, you know the rest.

    I'm booting from the kernel on a Mac OS partition on a SCSI drive but the
Linux partition resides on an IDE drive. I haven't played with other
configurations.

    I'm using 2.2.15-2.9.0 kernel that comes with YDL 1.2 by default. I have
also tested this with the 2.2.12 kernel found at
<ftp://ftp.yellowdoglinux.com/pub/yellowdog/kernel/2.2.12/>.

    The nice thing is that now I can use Mac-On-Linux right out of the box
without having to patch my kernel as 603-based machines require. My BogoMIPs
have gone from approximately 160 with the 603ev to 799 with the G3 card. I
can actually use RealPlayer without it dropping frames like crazy.

    I hope this helps someone out there. If you have any questions feel free
to e-mail me.

Cheers,

-lbn



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