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Installing NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP On A Laptop
From Higher Intellect Vintage Wiki
I hope this saves at least someone all the blood, sweat and tears I had to
shed to
install OpenStep 4.2 on my laptop.
This is only the first draft, and I would most appreciate any comments,
additional
information, or corrections.
Tomaz Slivnik
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Installing NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP on a laptop
A Guide
and
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions
1. Laptops
Q1.1. Can I install OpenStep / NextStep on a laptop?
Q1.2. Which laptops can I install OpenStep 4.2 on?
Q1.3. What configuration will I get if I install OpenStep 4.2 on XXX laptop?
2. EIDE
Q2.1. Which EIDE devices are supported by OpenStep 4.2?
Q2.2. Can I use more than 2G (4G) of disk space on my hard disk?
3. SCSI
Q3.1. Which SCSI PCMCIA cards are supported by OpenStep 4.2?
Q3.2. Which SCSI devices are supported by OpenStep 4.2?
Q3.2. Does the ZIP/JAZ drive work under OpenStep 4.2?
Q3.3. Can I use my SCSI disk as a boot disk?
4. Ethernet
Q4.1. Which Ethernet PCMCIA cards are supported by OpenStep 4.2?
Q4.2. How do I set up OpenStep 4.2 for my 3Com 589 series card to work?
5. Sound
Q5.1. Can I get sound to work on my laptop?
6. Serial ports & modems
Q6.1. Which modem PCMCIA cards work on OpenStep 4.2?
Q6.2. How do I set up OpenStep 4.2 for my serial ports/modems to work?
7. Advanced power management
Q7.1. Does OpenStep 4.2 support the Advanced Power Management feature of my
laptop?
8. PCMCIA
Q8.1. My PCMCIA card says it is a "CardBus" card. Will OpenStep 4.2
recognize it?
Q8.2. Will my combined network + modem card work?
9. Parallel Ports & Printers
Q9.1. Will I be able to print on my parallel port from my OpenStep 4.2
laptop?
10. USB Ports
Q10.1. Can I use the USB port from my OpenStep 4.2 laptop?
11. CPUs
Q11.1. NextAnswers says only Pentium and Pentium Pro are supported. Will
OpenStep 4.2 run on Pentium II?
12. Graphics
Q12.1. Which laptop graphics hardware is supported by OpenStep 4.2?
Q12.2. Which driver must I use on my laptop? How must I configure it?
13. The Installation Procedure
Q13.1. How do I install OpenStep 4.2 on my laptop?
14. Acknowledgements
15. Disclaimers
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Answers
1. Laptops
A1.1. Yes. Several people have installed and successfully used OpenStep 4.2
on
Intel based laptops. OpenStep 4.2 run on an appropriate and properly
configured Intel based laptop runs and is very stable.
Earlier versions of OpenStep and NextStep apparently are very
difficult
to configure to work on a laptops, but people have reported
successfully installing NextStep 3.3 in particular.
A1.2. OpenStep 4.2 has been reported to have been successfully installed on
the following systems:
Toshiba Tecra 720cdt, 730cdt, 730xcdt, 740cdt
IBM ThinkPad 380ED, 570, 760C
Dell Inspiron 7000A
Sony VAIO
HP OmniBook 4100
NextStep 3.3 has been reported to have been successfully installed on
the following systems:
IBM ThinkPad 760E
A1.3. Hard disk: up to 4G available space on your boot drive (which must
necessarily be an EIDE drive). Up to 28G on your attached external
SCSI drives (up to 4G per drive).
Ethernet: 10Mbps BNC or RJ45, with an appropriate PCMCIA Ethernet
card.
Sound: none.
Graphics: depends on your laptop:
Dell Inspiron 7000A: 1024x768 in 16 bit colour
(you must use the *latest*, i.e. version 4.04 beta, of the
ATI Rage Display Driver to get this resolution)
[I don't know about other laptops, perhaps someone can provide me
that information]
2. EIDE
A2.1. Any built-in EIDE hard disk or CD-ROM drive should work fine, as far
as I know. However, depending on your hardware configuration, you
might
have to use instruct the OpenStep 4.2 installation procedure to use
the Dual Primary and Secondary EIDE/Atapi Controller device driver
during the installation procedure from your built-in (EIDE) CD-ROM
(see A13.1 for more details).
In particular, it is now no longer necessary to use an external SCSI
CD-ROM to install OpenStep; the internal EIDE CD-ROM will do.
A2.2. No. OpenStep 4.2 does not support multiple OpenStep partitions on EIDE
disks, and the maximum disk partition size in OpenStep 4.2 is 4G. More
than 1 partition per SCSI disk should as far as I know work, but
apparently does not work with the supported PCMCIA SCSI controller
cards
(see A3.1). (does anyone know if this is a limitation of the Adaptec
SlimScsi cards or the driver?)
Note that the largest partition size that OpenStep, at least version
4.2
with patch 4 (the Y2K patch) applied, is 4GB, not 2GB. There are no
problems using partitions larger than 2G. Application software,
including
Unix system utilities, may, however, be confused by such partitions.
The
only standard Unix utilities for which people have reported problems
are dump and restore, which apparently only handle volumes up to 2GB
in
size. Quite in which version support for 4GB partitions was added,
however, is information that appears to have been lost in the mists of
time.
Older versions of OpenStep also had problems handling partitions
starting
at a point above the 4G mark on a disk, but this is (as of release
4.1?)
no longer so.
3. SCSI
A3.1. Only the Adaptec SlimScsi 1460 series cards will work (you must use
the Adaptec 6x60 chipset driver --- "Add" the "Adaptec PCMCIA to 6360
SCSI Adapter" in "SCSI Devices" panel in Configure.app). There are 5
cards in this series: 1460A, 1460A2, 1460B, 1460C, 1460D, and they
have
all been used successfully. For the 1460C and 1460D, the default IRQ
used is 11. On some laptops, this IRQ number is reserved for the use
by
the laptop's internal hardware, and even though no conflicts will be
reported, the card will fail to work with this IRQ setting. Changing
the IRQ setting usually helps. On a Dell Inspiron 7000A, using the IRQ
10 works.
Apparently, though I haven't personally checked this, you will only be
able to format one partition (of at most 4G) on each attached SCSI
hard
drive using these cards. The 1460A and 1460A2 apparently support up to
7 attached SCSI devices, and the 1460D apparently supports up to 3
attached SCSI devices.
A3.2. Yes, the SCSI versions do. The parallel port versions do not work, of
course. Apparently the internal ZIP drive sold by Dell also works.
You must add an entry to your /etc/disktab file to accomodate
a JAZ drive. The following entries will work --- for a 1G JAZ:
jaz-1g|JAZ-1G:IOMEGAJAZ-1G:\
:ty=removable_rw_scsi:nc#3584:nt#4:ns#72:ss#1024:rm#5400:\
:fp#160:bp#0:\
:os=sdmach:z0#32:z1#96:ro=a:\
:pa#0:sa#1032192:ba#8192:fa#1024:ca#16:da#4096:ra#10:oa=time:\
:ia:ta=4.3BSD:aa:
For a 2G JAZ:
jaz-2g|JAZ-2G|iomega jaz 2GB E.1708/2:\
:ty=removable_rw_scsi:nc#3388:nt#4:ns#144:ss#1024:rm#5394:\
:fp#160:bp#0:\
:os=sdmach:z0#32:z1#96:ro=a:\
:pa#0:sa#1951488:ba#8192:fa#1024:ca#8:da#4096:ra#5:oa=time:\
:ia:ta=4.3BSD:aa:
The true geometry of the 2G Jaz drive is actually
jaz-2g|JAZ-2G|iomega jaz 2GB E.1708/2:\
:ty=removable_rw_scsi:nc#243:nt#255:ns#63:ss#512:rm#5394:\
:fp#320:bp#0:\
:os=sdmach:z0#64:z1#192:ro=a:\
:pa#0:sa#3903795:ba#8192:fa#1024:ca#8:da#4096:ra#5:oa=time:\
:ia:ta=4.3BSD:aa:
However, if I am to believe the Next's /etc/disktab file
("ss sector size -- MUST ALWAYS BE DEV_BSIZE (1024) FOR NOW"),
OpenStep does not support 512 bytes/sector devices, so an
approximation
to the true geometry must be used. Several geometries which work
satisfactorily circulate around the usenet newsgroups --- in fact any
geometry as above with variations to nc, nt, ns and sa should work
fine, provided that sa = nc*nt*ns <= 1951897. You might want to
keep the number ... reasonably low, otherwise formatting will take
forever.
A3.3. No. Devices driven by a PCMCIA controller card cannot be used as boot
devices.
4. Ethernet
A4.1. Only the following cards are known to work:
Xircom PS-CE2-10BT
3Com 589 series cards
Cogent EM595 PCMCIA
You can only buy the 3Com cards new nowadays. The Xircom CE2 series
cards have been discontinued and replaced by the CE3 series cards.
The CE3 series cards are different from the CE2 series cards and will
not work with the Xircom CE2 series driver.
The following 3Com 589 series cards will definitively work:
3Com Etherlink III 3C589C-COMBO
3Com Etherlink III 3C589C-TP
3Com Etherlink III 3C589D
3Com Megahertz 3CXE-589ET
3Com Megahertz 3CCE-589ET
3Com Megahertz 3CXE-589EC
3Com Megahertz 3CCE-589EC
Xircom PS-CE2-10BT cards: you must "Add" the "Xircom CreditCard
Ethernet Adapted IIps" in the "Network Devices" panel in
Configure.app.
Thereafter, apparently, everything should be plug-and-play.
3Com cards: you must "Add" the "3Com EtherLink III PCMCIA Adapter"
driver in the "Network Devices" panel in Configure.app. You may have
to change the "Auto Detect IDs" setting in the "Expert..." panel of
"Network Devices" section in Configure.app as follows:
589D series: change the value to "MFR=3ComCorporation, PROD=3C589D"
589E series: change the value to "MFR=3Com" (delete the "PROD="
portion altogether).
Alternatively, runing "grep PCMCIABus /usr/adm/messages" might help
you determine what the appropriate strings are for the MFR and PROD
setting.
You might have to play with the IRQ setting for the card. For me, IRQ
11 did not work, even though it did not report any conflicts, but IRQ
3 worked fine.
Note also that Combo Ethernet cards (i.e., ones providing both a BNC
and an RJ45 connector) will work in one mode or the other, not both -
do not try to utilize both connectors at the same time! Also, if
you're
using thin Ethernet (BNC), make sure the connections are terminated
properly (one terminator at each end of the chain).
5. Sound
A5.1. No. There are no sound drivers available for PCMCIA sound cards at
present.
6. Serial ports & modems
A6.1. People have generally reported no problems using built-in serial ports
and/or PCMCIA modem expansion cards. WinModems do not work. The
following modem cards definitively work:
Psion Dacom 56k+Fax Gold Card
A6.2. Set up your built-in ports using your laptop's BIOS setup program,
install the TTY Port Server driver in the "Other Devices" panel in
Configure.app (OpenStep installation procedure does not do it
automatically for you) and your built-in serial port should just
work. To enable your PCMCIA modem, go to Configure.app "Other Devices"
panel, and click "Add..." to add a second "Serial Port" device. Choose
the desired port, and select the "Connect Via" "PCMCIA Modem" setting.
7. Advanced power management
A7.1. No! You should turn Advanced Power Management off in your laptop's
BIOS setup menu, or using the supplied software. OpenStep 4.2 does not
cope well with any power management functions of your laptop, which
are
more likely than not going to crash it. In addition, you should turn
off
OpenStep 4.2's Advanced Power Management functions off by adjusting
the
adjusting setting in Configure.app in "Summary of Devices" page, in
the
"Expert..." subpanel: set the value of the "APM" setting to "No".
On some laptops (including my own Dell Inspiron 7000A), there is an
annoying little pin sticking out of the keyboard which is depressed
by the screen when you close the lid of the laptop. This will either
switch off the screen on the laptop, or it will put it in suspend
mode (i.e. stop the hard disk as well). If the latter happens,
OpenStep
will crash, so you should disable this feature in your BIOS setup or
otherwise if you can (or else avoid closing the lid of your laptop, or
else get a laptop which doesn't have this annoying critter). I can't
figure out a way to do this on the Dell, nor can I figure out how to
remove the little pin physically from the laptop. If anyone has
succeeded in doing this, I would be most interested to know.
8. PCMCIA
A8.1. No. CardBus cards will not work. This includes the following cards:
Adaptec SlimScsi 1480
A8.2. I believe A4.1 includes all the Ethernet cards which will work, and
none
of them contains an on-board modem, so I believe the answer is no.
9. Parallel Ports & Printers
A9.1. Yes, the parallel port should be supported automatically and will
appear
as the device /dev/pp0. To actually print anything interesting (i.e.,
PostScript) on a non-PostScript printer, you will have to obtain a
non-PostScript printer driver package like Dots or JetPilot, or a
postscript interpreter like GhostScript. I have never installed any of
these packages myself, so I cannot tell you which is the best, but
looking at the list of supported printers, I think Ghostscript will
probably be the best, if not the only, option. I will probably install
GhostScript on my system in time and will make publicly available
if nobody has done it yet (I believe Rex Dieter said he might be doing
this, however). The latest version of Ghostscript at the date I am
writing this is Aladdin GhostScript 6.0.
10. USB Ports
A10.1. No.
11. CPUs
A11.1. Yes, the Pentium II will work. Apparently the AMD processors will
also
work (though I have not checked this), but there are problems with
"older" Cyrix chips. Has anyone run OpenStep on "newer" Cyrix
processors
or on the Intel Celeron?
12. Graphics
A12.1. I don't know the complete list. The following laptops are known to
work:
Toshiba Tecra 720cdt, 730cdt, 730xcdt, 740cdt
IBM ThinkPad 380ED, 570, 760C
Dell Inspiron 7000A
Sony VAIO
HP OmniBook 4100
any laptop with ATI Rage
The best laptop graphics hardware for which drivers exist are the
ATI Rage compatible graphics cards.
A12.2. This is what I know; perhaps others who have used OpenStep on other
laptops can tell me their configuration:
Dell Inspiron 7000A --- "Add" the ATI Rage PCI/AGP-Bus Display
Driver in "Display Devices" panel in Configure.app. Use
"Expert Settings" to append the following string to "Auto
Detect IDs": 0x4C421002. Select the display mode; on my
14.1" screen, the highest resolution mode that works is
1024x768 in 32-bit colour (although Inspiron's display
will only distinguish 16 bits of colour). It doesn't matter
which refresh rate (60Hz, 70Hz, 75Hz) you use.
On other hardware using ATI Rage compatible video graphics, you
may have to add a different string of the form "0x....1002" to
the Auto Detect IDs. Using grep 1002 /private/adm/messages might
help determine what is the correct string to use.
13. The Installation Procedure
A13.1. Prerequisites:
- an Intel Pentium laptop, preferably one of those known
to work and listed in A1.2, containing a large enough
amount of RAM and a large enough hard disk (most modern
laptops qualify), a CD-ROM drive, a supported display,
and optionally any other required PCMCIA cards which are
preferably listed above
- OpenStep 4.2/Mach CD-ROM
- OpenStep 4.2/Mach Developer CD-ROM (if required)
- OpenStep 4.2/Mach Patch 4 (Y2K patch) CD-ROM
- OpenStep 4.2/Mach Installation floppy
- OpenStep 4.2/Mach Device Drivers floppy
- a blank 3.5" 1.44MB floppy
- a computer already running OpenStep, with either a CD-ROM
drive attached or access to the Internet
First, format the blank floppy (in NeXT format) on the machine
already running OpenStep, created the directory /private/Drivers/i386
on it and copy the following directories and their contents from the
OpenStep 4.2 patch 4 CD-ROM to this directory:
EIDE.config
EISABus.config
Floppy.config
PCMCIABus.config
(your display driver, e.g. ATIRageDisplayDriver.config)
The EIDE and PCMCIABus drivers should be copied from the
OPENSTEP4.2_Mach/Drivers/OS4.2BetaDrivers directory on the CD-ROM
and the EisaBus and Floppy drivers should be copied from the
OPENSTEP4.2_Mach/Drivers/OS4.2BetaDrivers/OS4.2ReleasedDrivers
directory on the CD-ROM. The display driver should preferably be
copied from the BetaDrivers directory, if a driver is there,
otherwise it should be copied from the ReleasedDrivers directory.
If you do not have a CD-ROM drive attached to your computer already
running OpenStep, you may obtain the above driver files from
NextAnswers on the Apple Enterprise web site. Note, however, that
those files are compressed package files, and they must be
appropriately decompressed first and put in the format described
above
on the floppy disk.
Next, read the installation instructions in the book "Installing
and Configuring OpenStep Release 4.x For Mach". I will not include
here
information which is already contained in that book; although things
are more-or-less self-explanatory and you will probably get by
without
reading it, I recommend you do read it.
Next, insert the OpenStep Install floppy in the floppy drive on
your laptop, insert the OpenStep 4.2/Mach CD-ROM in your CD-ROM,
and reboot the laptop (NB the CD-ROM must be inserted in the drive
before you boot the laptop (or possibly can also be inserted very
early on in the installation process, but you won't be prompted for
it), or the installation procedure will crash ungracefully).
Follow the instructions on screen and in the Installation booklet
supplied with your CD-ROMs. Most things should be self-explanatory;
but note the following points:
- when asked which driver to use for your hard disk and CD-ROM,
in most cases you will need to use the Dual Primary and Secondary
EIDE/Atapi Adapter Driver (included on the OpenStep 4.2/Mach Driver
floppy). In some cases maybe the ordinary EIDE Driver will be
appropriate. Only one of these will work; the other will soon crash
your installation procedure. If the Dual driver fails, try the
other
one.
- when asked if you wish to install additional drivers, insert
the floppy with additional drivers you had previously prepared
into the floppy drive and choose option "2 to load a device
driver from the disk in the floppy disk drive.". Install all
the device drivers you put on the floppy (EIDE, EISABus, Floppy,
PCMCIABus, display driver). NB (!) the EIDE driver you should
ask it to install here is the ordinary one, not the Dual Controller
one.
- when you come to the "partitioning your hard disk" menu, make
sure you allocate no more than 4096 MB (perhaps even 4095MB,
I have not tried it with 4096MB) to the OpenStep partition.
OpenStep,
and the installation procedure itself, will not work if you
allocate
more than 4096MB to OpenStep (you can try, but you will be wasting
your time).
Keep your "additional drivers" floppy handy as you will need it twice
more, as stated in the "Installing and Configuring OpenStep ..."
book.
During the installation procedure, the "Configure.app" window will
come up. Look at answers A3.1, A4.1, A6.2, A7.1, A12.2 to see which
settings you must adjust; perhaps there will be others. I also
suggest
you enable the "Force Cold Boot" option in "Other Devices" panel; my
laptop does not seem to reboot gracefully unless this option is
enabled.
Now proceed with the installation procedure as per "Installing and
Configuring OpenStep ..." book. I suggest you reboot once the
installation is completed, before installing OpenStep Developer and
other packages. For some reason, my laptop did not behave normally
upon the first "boot", but the next reboot is a proper boot like any
other.
If required, install the other packages in the following order:
- OpenStep 4.2/Mach Developer
- EOF 2.1 from OpenStep 4.2/Mach Patch 4 CD-ROM
- Patch 4
If you want to be able to compile for architectures other than
Intel, you should install Developer libraries and all subsequent
packages fat.
NB You must set up a password for the "me" account, otherwise
you will be logged in automatically as "me" every time you reboot
or log out! You can do this in the Preferences panel.
14. Acknowledgements
I have freely used information from posts on next-related Usenet groups.
To install OpenStep on my Dell Inspiron successfully, I have referred to
the excellent description by Timothy Van Zandt (http://zandtwerk.insead.fr).
The correct settings for the Dell Inspiron 7000A described in answers A4.1
and A12.2 in particular, and possibly others, have been copied from that
document.
Many thanks also to Phil B Rubino for many excellent suggestions, and for
referring me to the Van Zandt document.
15. Disclaimers
While I have endeavoured to make sure that the information in this
document is correct, this document is provided to you as a free public
service
and comes with no warranty, express or implied. You use information in
this document at your own risk, and I accept no liability of any kind,
including without limitation liability for any losses you may incur as a
consequence of using or relying on the information contained in this
document.
Copyright (C) 2000 Tomaz Slivnik