Linux/m68k on the Prisma 40

Porting base

My Prisma 40 port is based on kernel 2.2.17 with the Debian m68k patches. For the m68k filesystem, I am using RedHat 5.1 from the "Amiga Unix Compendium v1.2" CD. More specifically, I have RedHat 5.1 installed on my Amiga 2000/060 so I just copied the whole root filesystem across to the NFS server PC and changed the hostname, IP address and fstab as necessary. Kernel development is being done using a cross-compiler running on Slackware Linux 7.1 on a 550 MHz AMD K6-2 PC (it would have been nice to have used the native compiler on my Amiga but the PC is a lot faster).

To load the kernel, I have adapted the 16xcfg utility from the MVME project.

Prisma 40 Driver status

• Keyboard: No support as yet.
• Screen: Framebuffer support but no text console.
• RS-232 ports: Minimal support for a serial console on the terminal port and a serial mouse on the joystick port.
• Network: The Ethernet port is recognised as eth0 . Ping, telnetd and NFS are all working.

See what it looks like

OK, so a Linux boot display is not very exciting but it is anyway.

• Linux booting on a Prisma 40

How long did it take?

Once I had a working cross-compiler, it took about three weeks to produce a kernel which would get as far as mounting root over NFS before crashing. Finding the cause of the crash took another 2 weeks after which I could login and run programs. The first successful login was on 30th June 2001.

Still to do on the Prisma 40

• Add console support for the framebuffer.
• Lots of work on the serial interface.
• Try and detect the hardware during startup.

Linux Downloads

Download utilities and patches for Linux on the Prisma 40.