The state of PA-RISC Linux support in 2022

[@michaherberts7691]

Hi, very cool. I also own two C8000 :-) Try to install gnome. Thats funny and there are some small programms on the depothelper page. Looking forware for new videos.

[@Shiunbird]

What programs are you exactly talking about? I thought of GNOME but without hardware acceleration the performance is pure pain.

[@michaherberts7691]

Don´t you run the HWenable driver for the ATI card? I run, eclipse, Arcobat, mozilla, xmms, and some depothelper software. Did you are able to run the depothelper? If yes, please set up a video about it. Thanks

[@Shiunbird]

@@michaherberts7691 Oh, I thought you were talking about Linux... yes, I have hardware acceleration under 11.11 with HWenable. But depothelper doesn't work for 11.11 anymore. What I did was to dump everything from the archive and install everything. Not great, but works.

[@dr.shuppet5452]

I should get a Linux compatible video card

[@Shiunbird]

I'd say you would be successful with a PCI Radeon with Power Mac firmware (I used to have a Radeon 7000, sold it with my IntelliStation 285) but, of course, initial firmware boot prompts would all only come via serial console. My attempts on different machines with more modern video cards (PCIe Radeons and Quadros, and older PCI non-PPC firmware Radeons) either crash or give out corrupted colours, or garbage output.

[@dr.shuppet5452]

@@Shiunbird That's a good tip, since both Power Macs and HPPA machines are big endian.

[@Shiunbird]

@@dr.shuppet5452 I was very happy with the Radeon 7000 PCI and regret very much selling it. The only problem with modern Linux is that it doesn't support non-power-of-two textures, so when you are resizing a window, in many desktop composers you get some stupid corruptions until you stop resizing or moving the window. It really worked on every single big endian machine I ever put it on and I'm quite certain it would even have worked on the Octane with a PCI cage, starting it via serial console. When I was testing the IntelliStation, I wanted a Radeon 9200 PCI Mac, but never found one. For the AGP FireGL, I dumped the firmware with Linux from the serial console and it really seems to be the same firmware as the PC version of the FireGL, so I think HP handles endianness swaps via software.

[@dr.shuppet5452]

@@Shiunbird I can try pulling out the ATI Rage 128 from my Power Macintosh G3, that is quite an old card though and might have problems with modern drivers.

[@Shiunbird]

@@dr.shuppet5452 Is the basic "ati" driver still around? help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver the 7000 seems to be the oldest. But fbdev hasn't been removed from the kernel yet and it should support the Rage 128/ I'd say... boot it up without USB and without the AGP GPU but with the Rage 128 - without USB, this should give you the initial boot on ttyS0. If you do ttyS0,9600, you won't even need to reconnect your console cable. Run through the Linux setup with the Rage 128 then reboot still without USB, reboot and boot to both local console and to ttyS0. During boot, plug the USB keyboard. I think this will do. Maybe you will need to install fbdev manually. Pick an old style desktop environment and you are gold. I think this will do!

[@dr.shuppet5452]

I don't think the McKinley CPU has the same socket as the PA-RISC one.

[@Shiunbird]

I remember reading years ago that the mobo is the same, with just different firmware and, obviously, shipped with PA-RISC and not Itanium. Do you have a source? I'm confused now.

[@dr.shuppet5452]

@@Shiunbird I was apparently wrong, it's listed as having the same PAC611 socket on a CPU seller website, it's just not listed on Wikipedia among the CPUs supporting that socket and I couldn't find any mention of the socket type of the Mako CPU anywhere else. OpenPA even says that an update to Itanium is available, just like in the case of rp34xx servers. There were also Integrity servers sold with Mako CPUs - HP Integrity rp3340 looks exactly the same as my rx2620, it's probably the same machine as either the rx2620 or the earlier rx2600, just with different firmware. Maybe the C8000 is the same, just in a different case? (HP zx2000/zx6000 Itanium workstations are basically the rx2600 with quieter fans and AGP ports.) That would be kind of cool, since it would mean we both have four machines in one :D Edit: rp3440 has the same fan as rx2620

[@Shiunbird]

@@dr.shuppet5452 Now that's intriguing - I'd love to put my hands on an Itanium machine and if one could do both, this would be truly splendid. I suspect it would require a full reinstall, etc., but if it would support, for example, Itanium Windows, I'd love to try.

[@dr.shuppet5452]

@@Shiunbird The Mako CPU module also looks almost exactly the same as an Itanium 2 one. The firmware change however would be an issue, since that was probably only done by HP.

[@Shiunbird]

@@dr.shuppet5452 I'm very tempted to get a CPU and plug in, and keep an eye on the serial console. However, I'm using my C8000 almost every day, so not sure I want to risk it =)))

[@bankbank]

how much did this machine cost you?

[@Shiunbird]

Few hundred EUR - don't recall for sure.