metaruss

I actually did not do the work to create this, but I wanted to make
it available to the free software community. Special thanks to Eric Valette for all the hard
work in putting it together.

Basically, the kernel image used on the rescue disk for the Debian
2.2 “Potato” PowerPC distribution will not work on the Motorola MCP750.
There are a few patches required to make the IRQ mapping and IDE
controller work properly. If you do not have a native PPC or
cross-compiler environment to build a PPC kernel, then you will not be
able build a kernel with the required patches. Even if you do, the
MCP750 may not be able to boot from floppy or CDROM, depending on what
type of CompactPCI chassis it is installed in. Therefore, you will
need to network boot the board, which requires a combination rescue/root
image to be transferred to the board via TFTP. Eric’s image provides
that setup, using a Linux 2.2.17-pre9 kernel. Here
are the files:

• boot-mcp750.bin – the kernel/installer image.
• BOOTING – board setup example (env, niot, and nbo).

Be sure that you have “Network PReP-Boot Mode Enabled” set to “Y”
and don’t be surprised if the “nbo” command fails with “Network Boot
Controller/Device Error”. Just try again. Once the installer is up,
you may install Debian in the usual fashion EXCEPT if you are installing
to hard disk. If that is the case DO NOT use the installer to setup
your partition table (cfdisk). Doing so will not work and will also
break the installer, requiring a reboot. Instead, scroll down to the
last few installation options and select “Start a shell”. From here,
use fdisk (not cfdisk) to setup the partitions and exit the shell when
complete. Also, I recommend using /dev/hdc1 as the root partition,
since this is the default boot parameter in Eric’s image. Otherwise, you can use a hex editor to easily change it (is there an rdev for PPC?).

Once I had Debian installed and upgraded to a sid/woody setup, I built a 2.4.x kernel for it. The 2.4.18-pre6 kernel worked on the MCP750 without any special modifications. While the 2.2.17-pre9 from Eric did not work on the MCPN750 (non-system slot version of the MCP750), the 2.4.18 seemed to.