Phase out 32bit ppc due to bugfix and maintenance burden

Al Dunsmuir al.dunsmuir at sympatico.ca
Sun May 11 13:54:50 UTC 2014


On Sunday, May 11, 2014, 8:30:27 AM, Christian Zigotzky wrote:
> On 09.05.2014 17:46, Al Dunsmuir wrote:
>> Hello Phil,
>>
>> On Friday, May 9, 2014, 5:32:33 AM, Phil Knirsch wrote:
>>> Over the past year the team working on the Power architecture for Fedora
>>> has been struggeling more and more with keeping 32bit alive and happy.
>>> This is simply due to the fact that we neither have the manpower to fix
>>> all the issues coming up over and over again for 32bit nor do we have
>>> the legacy hardware anymore for testing things (though the later is less
>>> of a problem).
>> There  has  not  been  any  discussion  on this mailing list regarding
>> ppc-32 since my posting in December, and a recent query re ppc-64 also
>> went unanswered.
>>
>> Keeping the discussion in the open makes it more likely for you to get
>> assistance,  and  perhaps  introduce  opinions  that would represent a
>> different viewpoint.
>>
>> Since this fall, I've been busy collecting information, and additional
>> ppc  hardware  for  testing,  as well as attempting to install various
>> current and obsolete ppc distributions.
>>
>> I've now got the following Apple hardware:
>>     iMac  350  MHz
>>     eMac  G4  1 GHz (ATI)
>>     PowerMac G4 dual 1GHz
>>     Mini G4 1.5GHZ
>>     PowerMac  G5  1.6 GHz (AGP)
>>     about 1/2 dozen different ATI video cards for the PowerMacs
>>     - Also have x86 variants of most to allow video driver validation
>>       and development on both architectures.
> I could test it on my PA6T system (Nemo board) if you like. ;-)

Another ATI/Radeon.

For  Nvidia  on ppc, I only have the Nvidia Geforce4 MX that came with
one the PowerMac G4.

>>
>> Within  the last 2 months, I was able to pick up a pair of inexpensive
>> IBM  7046-B50  (32-bit,  CHRP)  servers,  so  I  can run AIX 5.3 to do
>> work-related  programming  (new AIX ports of rpm, Perl, Python 2.7 and
>> 3.4, and eventually a more modern minimal desktop - likely Mate), plus
>> dual boot with Fedora.
>>
>> Both  units  now  have  IBM  GXT135P  video (Matrox G450) and I have a
>> GXT120P  as  well.  I've got x86 variants of the G450, and one for the
>> other  on  order.  Redhat  just  produced  a minimal Matrox KMS driver
>> targeted for servers, so that should be good enough.

I  don't know if the minimal KMS driver has any acceleration. Even IBM
added  minimal acceleration for the GXT135p to AIX, so there should be
hope for something useful in the future.

I  started  with the GXT145Ps, but then picked up the GXT120P from the
UK for completeness after reading that the older Linux support for the
B50  only  targeted GXT120P and GXT130P. The Matrox MY220P (x86 618-04
PCI) matching the GXT120P arrived in yesterday's post.

The  older  Fedora  version  won't boot on the B50 (yaboot to start in
64-bit  mode),  but  I've  found  a  reference to SUSE lilo updates to
support the B50.   I'm going to spend today investigating further.

There  is  a  fair  bit of information about switching to grub2 on the
Macs,  but  I'd like to get the B50 to the starting gate in yaboot and
progress the systems together to grub.

Al



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