Apple Network Server MacOS based ROMs found
- Thread starter eric
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Well, pin 33 on all four chips is definitely tied to a thicker trace and via as is typically used for ground or power plane connections. Visual doesn't tell us which one it is tied to, but given that the 29F800 on 7100 DIMM works, it must be tied to Power.
I wonder why? The ROM chips have a Byte# pin? The ROM chips use 33 as a another power pin? Apple left the option to put programmable chips on those modules?
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Still installing Debian, pretty sure it crashed cuz I only have 196mb ram for now, switched to deb 8 and it recognized everything including network!
Here's the ANS running marathon on Mac OS, runs solid actually.
Are you doing that on the internal video, or a video card? What resolutions and colour depths are you getting?
Yeah, via the internal GPU.
I think 256 colors, at 480p not exactly sure. Ran p fine.
I have ordered a rage 128, should come soon, will let y'all know if it works.
Debian was able to see my ati GPU from my xserve, but didn't display anything, then again install still hasn't finished (slow. Needs more ram than 196mb)
The Rage 128 will work fine with the ANS. You may or may not have to change the output-device to it; I don't know how the 2.0 ROM works in that regard.
It likely would have been BYTE# on any ROM in that form factor, since they would be following the JEDEC standard.
Debian 8 on the ANS!
I do believe, unless anyone else has done this that I'm the first person to run a modern OS on this thing.
It's, slow...but imma push on regardless!
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I received @trag 's ROM SIMMs and tested them out thoroughly. One of the four appears to be a dud and I'll send that back to him for a post-mortem. The other three work. I was able to boot from the internal SCSI and internal video as advertised, and it even fixed my problem with the onboard MACE Ethernet.
However, I think some of the performance problems @mizerable is reporting is because this ROM doesn't seem to properly handle the L2 cache. (It also doesn't set parity on the RAM even if the RAM is parity, though the ROM also decides the timing, so it may not make much difference.) MacBench proves this out: the preproduction ROMs, which do handle the L2 and RAM correctly, get a CPU score that's seventy five percent faster. Even the disk rating is faster despite being limited to the external SCSI! Other aspects of this ROM, such as bogus devaliases, lead me to suspect this ROM wasn't actually finished.
Rhapsody does start on this ROM, but it doesn't get very far, presumably because of Bandit differences. But it gets farther than the preproduction ROMs do.
Bottom line is that if you want to run MacOS on the ANS, use the 1.1.20.1 ROMs and work around the glitches. Perhaps we can figure out a best of both worlds approach.
Here is a more detailed write-up, and again many thanks to @trag for doing this.
oldvcr.blogspot.com
However, I think some of the performance problems @mizerable is reporting is because this ROM doesn't seem to properly handle the L2 cache. (It also doesn't set parity on the RAM even if the RAM is parity, though the ROM also decides the timing, so it may not make much difference.) MacBench proves this out: the preproduction ROMs, which do handle the L2 and RAM correctly, get a CPU score that's seventy five percent faster. Even the disk rating is faster despite being limited to the external SCSI! Other aspects of this ROM, such as bogus devaliases, lead me to suspect this ROM wasn't actually finished.
Rhapsody does start on this ROM, but it doesn't get very far, presumably because of Bandit differences. But it gets farther than the preproduction ROMs do.
Bottom line is that if you want to run MacOS on the ANS, use the 1.1.20.1 ROMs and work around the glitches. Perhaps we can figure out a best of both worlds approach.
Here is a more detailed write-up, and again many thanks to @trag for doing this.
Testing MacOS on the Apple Network Server 2.0 ROMs
It's time for another save point in the continuing saga of the various ROMs for the Apple Network Server , Apple's first through-and-through...
oldvcr.blogspot.com