Subject: Howto run Linux on ACER PICA 61

From: "Alexander Voropay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 20:23:57 +0400

Hi!

 I've just got (for free :) an ancient MIPS ACER PICA 61 motherboard.

 Can anyone help/guide me to run Linux-MIPS on this machine ?
Is it still possible to run Linux on this architecture ?

 The motherboard is old (~1993) and it is very difficult to find
any documentations... AFAIK, this is version of ARC MIPS.
(mipsel)

 This is Full-size AT board, AT power supply, 5 ISA slots, 8 SIMM
slots. The CPU is PACEMIPS R4000-50Mhz (x2=100 internal ???) by
Performance Semiconductor Corp.. NatSemi Ethernet/AUI onboard.
No IDE connector. One additional slot is not ISA, but maked as
IO an contains SCSI/Floppy/Serial/Perallel/Mice card. Another slot
is like reversed EISA (double) and marked as VIO (locabus video?).
Unfortunately, the original videocard is lost. :( However it works fine
with old CirrusLogic VGA card in ISA slot (old ISA Trident 8900/9000
does not works).

St.Petersburg, Russia
--
-=AV=-

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From: Ralf Baechle <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 21:38:39 +0200

On Tue, Jun 22, 2004 at 08:23:57PM +0400, Alexander Voropay wrote:

> Unfortunately, the original videocard is lost. :(

Great.  Because that was a S3 968 video card which for it's time was
delivering quite a nice performance.

> However it works fine with old CirrusLogic VGA card in ISA slot (old
> ISA Trident 8900/9000 does not works).

Linux has code for this system but it's suffering from severe bitrot.
I still have the documents here so I could help you a bit if you were
willing to resurrect the kernel - which should be relativly easy, also
due to the system's similarity to another, somewhat better supported
system, the Olivetti M700-10.

  Ralf