Received: from nic.funet.fi (nic.funet.fi [128.214.248.6])
by odie.barnet.ac.uk (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id BAA26349
for <willy@odie.fluff.org>; Mon, 13 Oct 1997 01:47:33 +0100
Received: from vger.rutgers.edu ([128.6.190.2] EHLO vger.rutgers.edu ident: root [port 39020]) by nic.funet.fi with ESMTP id <20349-17628>; Mon, 13 Oct 1997 03:46:00 +0300
Received: by vger.rutgers.edu id <971603-285>; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 16:43:13 -0400
Received: from lions.cableinet.net ([193.38.113.5] HELO lions.cableinet.net ident: IDENT-NOT-QUERIED [port 27983]) by vger.rutgers.edu with SMTP id <971595-289>; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 16:42:58 -0400
Received: from zebedee.local (usr95-gat.cableinet.co.uk [194.117.153.104]) by lions.cableinet.net (950413.SGI.8.6.12/951211.SGI) via ESMTP id VAA20792 for <linux-arm@vger.rutgers.edu>; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 21:32:00 +0100
Received: from dougal (dougal.local [10.0.128.68])
by zebedee.local (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id VAA02539
for <linux-arm@vger.rutgers.edu>; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 21:50:18 +0100 (BST)
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 20:30:43 +0000
From: Mark <mark.wild@cableinet.co.uk>
To: linux-arm@vger.rutgers.edu
Subject: Re: Advice on linux for an u/g A310
Message-ID: <f98211d847%mark@dougal.local>
In-Reply-To: <343FD1AC.6FB28CBB@treblig.org>
X-Mailer: Messenger v1.02 for RISC OS
X-Posting-Agent: RISC OS Newsbase 0.59d
X-Orcpt: rfc822;linux-arm@vger.rutgers.edu
Sender: owner-linux-arm@vger.rutgers.edu
Precedence: bulk
Status: RO
In message <343FD1AC.6FB28CBB@treblig.org> you wrote:
> Mark wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I want to install linux on my old A310 and would appreciate a little
> > advice. It has a 36Mhz arm 3 upgrade and 4meg of ram. I've also got
> > an ICS IDE interface with an 80meg drive spare. Which kernel should
> > I use for this setup? and is 80meg enough hd space? It also only has
> > the original akf11? display (i.e. not VGA). Is this enough?
>
> Hi,
> If you have RISC OS 3 then this should be OK (although I've not tried
> ICS IDE - does anyone know the status of that??). The boot loader
> presently doesn't like RISC OS2; but that is not an insurmountable
> problem - I should be able to hack something together for that.
I have got RO3.1 so no problem there.
>
> With 4MB of RAM it will be a bit slow - I wouldn't try running X on it
> (actually I'll try it later to tell you how it goes...).
I wasn't going to anyway.
> 80MB of space is enough for a lot of things. Don't worry about the
> display, it will work - although again X might be hard going.
OK.
> > I mainly want to use it for demand-dial internet access and mail/news.
> > I will need to get a serial port card and ethernet card so which of
> > these are best supported?
>
> Well the good news on that is that an Acorn Ether1 or Ether3 card should
> work a treat. The bad news is I haven't finished porting the serial port
> driver to the old machines - so your dial up just ain't going to work.
> However the good part of the bad news is that I've started porting it -
> if you'd asked two or three weeks ago I'd have told you that there was
> no work done on it !
> Perhaps I'll get some more work done on that tomorrow.
Is this the internal serial port? because I meant a h/s serial card
because the internal on has never worked and is too slow anyway. I
seem to recall something on the web pages about the Atomwide ones
saying they work fine - is this not so?
I don't have an ethernet card as yet so I will need to get one. Are
the Acorn ones still available?
> The current known working old machines are:
> 1) An A440/1 with RISC OS3, ARM 3, MFM hard drives, and Acorn Ether 1
> - he answers to the name 'klaatu'. He has 4MB OF RAM.
>
> 2) AN R260 (~=A540) with 8MB of RAM, RISC OS3, Acorn Ether3 - he
> answers to the name 'oaktree' and we are just trying to get his Acorn
> SCSI card working.
>
> I don't think anyone has successufully run IDE on the old machine syet -
> I think there may be some work which has to be done to stop the IDE code
> trying to mangle the A5000's IDE hardware which of course you haven't
> got.
> As for kernel versions, the 2.0.31-9 is the best bet; but you'l need
> some patches I can give you.
> The biggest problem is that there isn't a set of installation discs for
> the old machines yet. But if your a good Linux hacker you can easily get
> the machines going via netowrk rootfs and build things by hand.
> Things are improving.
I've got a freeBSD system which I can use for that.