Even if you could compile on a IIfx, the amount of time it would take would be astronomical. An Aranym build took me over an hour on an Ivy Bridge i7. I believe someone on this list has made kvm m68k instances of modern debian work on x86_64, and it is by far the fastest.
Installing etch on my LC475 + FPU + 132MB of RAM and SCSI2SD took an hour to install etch with barebones X, FWIW. On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 7:09 PM Finn Thain <fth...@telegraphics.com.au> wrote: > > Hi Stan, > > On Sat, 20 Feb 2016, Mac User wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > I've installed Debian 3.1 (sarge) on a Mac IIfx with 32 MB memory and on > > two Mac LC III systems each with 36 MB memory. > > The LC III uses Egret ADB, and the driver for that chip is known to be > unstable. Both the LC III and the IIfx use the NCR 5380 SCSI driver, which > is a work-in-progress. PDMA on the LC III is broken and DMA on the IIfx > was never implemented, so SCSI throughput is low. These are both known > issues, and are documented at http://www.mac.linux-m68k.org/status/ > > > The installations (text only, no X-Windows, Linux 2.2.25 kernel) are > > relatively stable (more on that later). > > Linux v2.2 has many known bugs that have been fixed in v2.6 or v3. I would > advise that you avoid old kernels. > > > I read that there's an effort to restart Debian support for mac68k after > > Debian 3.1, but I haven't found much information about it. > > > > There is no Debian port for Apple Mac 68k hardware as such. There is a > Debian port for the m68k architecture, which covers hardware from Apollo, > Apple, Atari, Commodore, NeXT, Sun etc. Debian/m68k is actively developed. > Please see https://wiki.debian.org/M68k > > > I'm currently compiling Linux kernel 3.19.8 on the IIfx, but I may need > > binutils > 2.15, so I'm compiling binutils-2.26 on an LC III. The LC > > III successfully compiled Linux kernel 2.6.39.4 but I couldn't get it to > > boot (may be an issue with binutils). > > > > If there's an effort to build packages for etch or later, I'd like to > > help, though I currently don't know much about how to build Debian > > packages. And I don't have a cross compiler for mac68k, only the IIfx > > and LC III systems. > > > > Modern compilers are more CPU intensive, package code bases have grown > (requiring more RAM to build), and developers continue to adopt new > compiler features. So native compilation on hardware like yours is not > realistic in many cases. > > If you want to build your own kernels, I suggest you obtain a cross > toolchain from kernel.org: https://www.kernel.org/pub/tools/crosstool/ > > > I was surprised that the IIfx is considerably slower than the LC III for > > almost everything, and the internal clock on the IIfx comes to a near > > stop when its CPU is busy (not so bad on the LC III). All the systems > > have SCSI stability issues if two or more disks are connected (phase > > errors, timeouts). Hopefully these will be fixed in some of the later > > kernels. > > The scsi stability issues can be resolved with the right patches. A > timekeeping issue suggests high timer interrupt latency. If this problem > affects recent kernels, we could look into it. If you are willing to test > a recent kernel binary, I'd be happy to build one for you. > > -- > > > > > -Stan > > > > > >
