On Wed, 20 Jun 2001 09:21:37 -0500 "Spencer J Sinn" <ssinn at qwest.net> wrote: > I just became the dubious owner of 3 Apple Macintosh Performa 467's and > I was wondering if anyone on the list has had any luck using these. The > hardware is listed as supported for linuxppc, mklinux or linux-m68k but > I am willing to sacrifice an Apple to the linux gods. Any suggestions? Hmm... I'm not sure that the model 'Performa 467' exists, are you sure these are not Performa 476s? The Performa 476 is a machine based on a 25MHz 68LC040 cpu. The 68LC040 is an FPU-less chip, and was unsupported under earlier releases of Mac68k Linux & NetBSD. Recently however, they seem to have gotten the fpu emulation working for these models. Certain 68LC040 models however, can never run *nix, as there is a 'broken' version of the chip which does not allow for fpu emulation - if you cannot run SoftwareFPU under MacOS, the chip is broken and won't run *nix. Replace the chip with a full 68040, or a non-broken 68LC040. One nice feature that sets the Performa475, 476, LC475 and Quadra 605 apart from all other models, is the ability to overclock these machines without the usual clockchip replacement. It's a simple matter of adding a switch and a couple of resistors, and the machine can be toggled between 25 & 33Mhz. This actually increases the bus speed, not just the cpu, so the performance gain is system-wide (including SCSI interface speed). It's also a plug-in upgrade to add a full 68040, which gives the machine a true hardware FPU. One issue that you may encounter is getting a working NIC for these machines. They all use the proprietary Apple LC-PDS NIC, or one of the aftermarket clones. Unfortunately, not all of the LC-PDS NICs are supported in Linux; you'll just have to try booting a kernel and see if the NIC is registered and assigned an interface. All of the 8390 based NICs work (aka NE2000), as do the genuine Apple NICs. Some NICs from Dayna do not work. The best Linux route for these machines is Debian Mac68k Linux, which can be downloaded from the Debian site. I'd suggest you join the debian-68k at lists.debian.org mailing list, as the system is still under development, and new kernels are frequently released to the list. Finally, my webserver for the past year has been an overclocked LC475, with a full 68040. It's rock-solid stable, and has never needed a reboot. Current uptime is: 8:47am up 47 days, 11:39, 1 user, load average: 0.07, 0.02, 0.00 Hope this helps, -.bill.layer.- -.those who are talking don't know, and those who know aren't talking.- -.frogtown.- -.minnesota.- -.u.s.a.-