[fpc-pascal]m68k and PPC development

[Full_Name]

Quoting Brad Campbell <brad at seme.com.au>:

> G'day all,
> 
> I have just picked up a couple of PPC machines and an '040 68k machine.
> With linux on them, would they be suitable for helping with compiler
> development? I figure I'd like to help the porting effort if I can..

The 68000 machine is probably past it Linux wise. If it will run Linux, it will 
be mkLinux which is probably not the best linux in the world, but will suffice.

Are your PPC's Apple branded? New world/Old world? Do they have PCI or NuBus? 

All NuBus PPC macs are also cursed to run mkLinux (if at all.) It's kind of a 
weird Linux that is based on a Mach micro kernal rather that monolithic. Apple 
had a hand in it at some point. I really doubt you'll get any funky windows 
managers running under it (though don't quote me on that) but it should suffice.

If you are blessed with an Apple PCI PPC you can probably run RedHat 
PPC/YelloDog PPC or even SuSe PPC. SuSe have just released 7.1 for PPC. 

A lot of IBM's and other PPC based computers (including the BeBox and Apple 
Clones) will run various other flavours of Linux. Some may run a well known 
vendors, others may be a little more bleading edge.

> Where to start?

Have a look at the various Mac related Linux distros to see if your machine is 
supported. Yellow Dog is a PPC only (I think) distro. Not all Macs are 
supported (or fully supported) because Apple does have a habbit of making 
proprietry hardware/mobo's. The only reason MacOS runs on some of the Apple 
machines is because they *made* it work ;-)

> Who to contact?

Have a look at Pascal Central (http://pascal-central.com).. they had a whole 
page on porting Free Pascal to the PPC at one point. Maybe someone else will 
step in here too ;-)

Matt

--

"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, 
we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and 
listening to repetitive electronic music." 
Kristian Wilson, 
Nintendo, Inc, 1989

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