24 ms·

The PowerPC port of Windows NT, apparently! https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/motorola-powerstack-risc-pc https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/mo

The PowerPC port of Windows NT, apparently! https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/motorola-powerstack-risc-pc https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/motorola-powersta... I believe the contemporary PowerPC port of Solaris 2.5.1 would also have a chance of working, as well as the OS/2 port. I think by 1996 there was a working Linux distribution with the nascent PPC port?

atdrummond 4y ago
The last two suggestions you offer (OS/2 and Linux) absolutely would be the case. I’m not sure about Solaris, at least officially. I’ve never heard of it in the PPC discussion groups in the 90s/00s. EDIT: A trusted friend in this space (part of the MorphOS/Amiga PowerPC community) told me that one would absolutely be able to run the PPC Solaris port. The proper reference machine was actually the RS/6000 (see: https://virtuallyfun.com/2020/05/28/powerpc-solaris-on-the-rs-6000/ https://virtuallyfun.com/2020/05/28/powerpc-solaris-on-the-r...), which ran on the 601, so the PowerStack I and PowerStack II would be absolutely capable of running said Solaris port competently.
- spijdar 4y ago
  The Solaris port was literally for a single point release of Solaris (2.5.1), and was dropped the next update. Extremely bizarre, but it is widely mentioned within that single version, in the installer and everything. Apparently the code was later referenced to help port OpenSolaris 10 to PowerPC, the result of which is here: https://github.com/andreiw/polaris https://github.com/andreiw/polaris Very mysterious, and since it's little endian, it only runs on these PReP/CHRP machines with LE-supporting firmware, like Windows used. I assume it'd work, if Solaris has the device drivers...
  - atdrummond 4y ago
    Correct - appreciate you adding the context about the PReP/CHRP reference systems. You can’t take the Solaris install and just run it on any PowerPC build, even if it is a 60x family machine.
- inkyoto 4y ago
  Solaris could not run on RS/6000 as it had a completely different internal architecture, starting from the POWER (not PowerPC) CPU's, a proprietary IBM system bus and other proprietary, IBM made peripherals. Solaris was ported to the PowerPC architecture (PPC 601 only, I think) and required a PCI bus to run on, but it was a one-off act and more of a mere curiosity rather than a serious investment, and the Solaris PowerPC port was quickly abandonded. Solaris could run on a Motorola PowerStack though as the PowerStack was essentially a PC with a PPC 601/603 CPU and with standard PC components (e.g. you could install a USB PCI card and attach a USB keyboard/mouse but I do not think AIX 4 had readily available PCI USB drivers, not initially anyway).
  - atdrummond 4y ago
    The initial point release could not run on the RS/6000. There are people who have successfully installed and used it in the following years; it does however require modifications and source that were created after the fact. I’ve personally installed Solaris on a PPC ThinkPad, which is even more different from a PowerStack than an RS/6000 is. My mention of the RS/6000 was mainly to point out something which Spijdar explicitly called out, which is that these PowerPC ports (which wouldn’t be on most PowerStacks anyway as everyone I know ran Unix on them) targeted the PrEP/CHRP platforms explicitly. So just having a PowerPC chip of the right family isn’t enough.
    - inkyoto 4y ago
      > The initial point release could not run on the RS/6000. There are people who have successfully installed and used it in the following years; it does however require modifications and source that were created after the fact. I am curious about this. RS/6000's had had a microchannel bus and architecture until mid late nineties – when IBM started the transition onto the PCI bus in their RS6K workstations in the earnest (but not the servers), and – if my memory serves me well – the first few generations of new, PCI-based RS6k workstations had some hardware compatibility issues. Solaris also required Open Firmware to access the device tree and to boot up, and PReP proved to be a problematic replacement. > I’ve personally installed Solaris on a PPC ThinkPad, which is even more different from a PowerStack than an RS/6000 is. The PowerStack was effectively a standard PC with standard PC components inside, but with a PowerPC CPU and it came in a fancy, futuristic looking case which were the only two redeeming qualities / discerning features about the PowerStack. There was nothing else that was special about the PowerStack, and that was the point Motorola, Bull, Be and (to a certain extent) Apple and IBM were trying to make: we also make standard PC's, just like everyone else out there, that have a faster and a better CPU (PowerPC) compared to Intel CPU's. But then Motorola could not deliver, and IBM was not all that interested, and Intel dropped the Pentium Pro. Sun's own Ultra's 5/20/20/60 were, essentially, the same thing: a standard PC with a fancy CPU enslosed.
Lammy 4y ago
Fun fact: Windows NT runs the PowerPC in little-endian mode: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180806-00/?p=99425 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180806-00/?p=99... https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/contrib/doc/specs/ic/cpu/powerpc/mpc603e.pdf#G8.9223 https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/contrib/doc/specs/ic/cpu/powe... https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/contrib/doc/specs/ic/cpu/powerpc/6xx_pem.pdf#G8.18937 https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/contrib/doc/specs/ic/cpu/powe...
- atdrummond 4y ago
  Yes, and as Spijdar notes below, so does the single point release of Solaris for PPC that come out in this era.
- spijdar 4y ago
  So did Solaris! ... For some bizarre reason. I would love to hear an explanation for that, given SPARC is big endian only. I guess it was based on the x86 port? My fun fact is all PowerPC processors except the 970 "G5" CPU can do little endian! And the Linux kernel is actually capable of running LE processes on a BE kernel [1]. There was a bug for a long time in Linux where the kernel signal handler assumed all 32 bit processes are BE, but after patching that, 32 bit "ppcle" executables work. [1] Well, you can load mismatched endian processes, but syscalls and ioctls need data in the kernel endianness, so you would need a very weird libc and userland to actually use this

atdrummond 4y ago

The last two suggestions you offer (OS/2 and Linux) absolutely would be the case. I’m not sure about Solaris, at least officially. I’ve never heard of it in the PPC discussion groups in the 90s/00s. EDIT: A trusted friend in this space (part of the MorphOS/Amiga PowerPC community) told me that one would absolutely be able to run the PPC Solaris port. The proper reference machine was actually the RS/6000 (see: https://virtuallyfun.com/2020/05/28/powerpc-solaris-on-the-rs-6000/ https://virtuallyfun.com/2020/05/28/powerpc-solaris-on-the-r...), which ran on the 601, so the PowerStack I and PowerStack II would be absolutely capable of running said Solaris port competently.

spijdar 4y ago
The Solaris port was literally for a single point release of Solaris (2.5.1), and was dropped the next update. Extremely bizarre, but it is widely mentioned within that single version, in the installer and everything. Apparently the code was later referenced to help port OpenSolaris 10 to PowerPC, the result of which is here: https://github.com/andreiw/polaris https://github.com/andreiw/polaris Very mysterious, and since it's little endian, it only runs on these PReP/CHRP machines with LE-supporting firmware, like Windows used. I assume it'd work, if Solaris has the device drivers...
- atdrummond 4y ago
  Correct - appreciate you adding the context about the PReP/CHRP reference systems. You can’t take the Solaris install and just run it on any PowerPC build, even if it is a 60x family machine.
inkyoto 4y ago
Solaris could not run on RS/6000 as it had a completely different internal architecture, starting from the POWER (not PowerPC) CPU's, a proprietary IBM system bus and other proprietary, IBM made peripherals. Solaris was ported to the PowerPC architecture (PPC 601 only, I think) and required a PCI bus to run on, but it was a one-off act and more of a mere curiosity rather than a serious investment, and the Solaris PowerPC port was quickly abandonded. Solaris could run on a Motorola PowerStack though as the PowerStack was essentially a PC with a PPC 601/603 CPU and with standard PC components (e.g. you could install a USB PCI card and attach a USB keyboard/mouse but I do not think AIX 4 had readily available PCI USB drivers, not initially anyway).
- atdrummond 4y ago
  The initial point release could not run on the RS/6000. There are people who have successfully installed and used it in the following years; it does however require modifications and source that were created after the fact. I’ve personally installed Solaris on a PPC ThinkPad, which is even more different from a PowerStack than an RS/6000 is. My mention of the RS/6000 was mainly to point out something which Spijdar explicitly called out, which is that these PowerPC ports (which wouldn’t be on most PowerStacks anyway as everyone I know ran Unix on them) targeted the PrEP/CHRP platforms explicitly. So just having a PowerPC chip of the right family isn’t enough.
  - inkyoto 4y ago
    > The initial point release could not run on the RS/6000. There are people who have successfully installed and used it in the following years; it does however require modifications and source that were created after the fact. I am curious about this. RS/6000's had had a microchannel bus and architecture until mid late nineties – when IBM started the transition onto the PCI bus in their RS6K workstations in the earnest (but not the servers), and – if my memory serves me well – the first few generations of new, PCI-based RS6k workstations had some hardware compatibility issues. Solaris also required Open Firmware to access the device tree and to boot up, and PReP proved to be a problematic replacement. > I’ve personally installed Solaris on a PPC ThinkPad, which is even more different from a PowerStack than an RS/6000 is. The PowerStack was effectively a standard PC with standard PC components inside, but with a PowerPC CPU and it came in a fancy, futuristic looking case which were the only two redeeming qualities / discerning features about the PowerStack. There was nothing else that was special about the PowerStack, and that was the point Motorola, Bull, Be and (to a certain extent) Apple and IBM were trying to make: we also make standard PC's, just like everyone else out there, that have a faster and a better CPU (PowerPC) compared to Intel CPU's. But then Motorola could not deliver, and IBM was not all that interested, and Intel dropped the Pentium Pro. Sun's own Ultra's 5/20/20/60 were, essentially, the same thing: a standard PC with a fancy CPU enslosed.

Lammy 4y ago

Fun fact: Windows NT runs the PowerPC in little-endian mode: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180806-00/?p=99425 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180806-00/?p=99... https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/contrib/doc/specs/ic/cpu/powerpc/mpc603e.pdf#G8.9223 https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/contrib/doc/specs/ic/cpu/powe... https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/contrib/doc/specs/ic/cpu/powerpc/6xx_pem.pdf#G8.18937 https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/contrib/doc/specs/ic/cpu/powe...

atdrummond 4y ago
Yes, and as Spijdar notes below, so does the single point release of Solaris for PPC that come out in this era.
spijdar 4y ago
So did Solaris! ... For some bizarre reason. I would love to hear an explanation for that, given SPARC is big endian only. I guess it was based on the x86 port? My fun fact is all PowerPC processors except the 970 "G5" CPU can do little endian! And the Linux kernel is actually capable of running LE processes on a BE kernel [1]. There was a bug for a long time in Linux where the kernel signal handler assumed all 32 bit processes are BE, but after patching that, 32 bit "ppcle" executables work. [1] Well, you can load mismatched endian processes, but syscalls and ioctls need data in the kernel endianness, so you would need a very weird libc and userland to actually use this