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K6-2 K6-III Linux build

aoresteen

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 27, 2011
Messages
56
Location
Newnan, GA USA
Anyone do a Socket 7 K6-2 or K6-III Linux build back in the day? I'm doing a Socket 7 build to run Linux and would like to know what Linux version & core you used.

My Socket 7 build:

Asus P5-99VM, K6-2 500MHZ, 768 MB RAM, 120GB Hard drive. DVD, floppy. May upgrade it to a K6-III 450 MHZ.
 
Back in the day? Like February? :) I occasionally run on a K6-2 450. Core? I assume you mean "kernel".

Most all Linuces today use a Debian kernel--the only difference between them is what's bundled on.

You didn't say what you wanted to do with the build--or if you needed a GUI. Later builds tend to be pokier on slow hardware, so you may want to look for a pre-systemd build, such as Squeeze. The choice of GUI will probably affect performance more than anything--I like XFCE because it's simple and reasonably fast.

On my K6-2, I run non-GUI NetBSD 6.1.4 (which isn't Linux), which still has support for a number of legacy devices (which is why I use it), but your needs may be far different.

The important thing is to have enough memory and disk storage available. 768MB should do for the first and perhaps 10GB for the second.
 
Xubuntu 12.04 would run happily on my Thinkpad 390's meager Pentium MMX 233 + 512mb RAM, so I'm gonna imagine it would run on a K6-500mhz system even better. You might even be able to do some basic internet tasks through firefox on there. The thinkpad was used mostly for email and word processing by my kids. It was slow, but it worked.
 
Thanks all! Yes I did mean 'kernel" Sorry, my bad!

The K6 will be used to compile a kernel & apps for my 233MHz Pentium Libretto 110CT that has only 64MB RAM. I have a modern Linux Mint computer with 8 GB RAM & Quad core but it's way to far from the Libretto to ensure compatibility with the Libretto. Hence the K6 as a stepping stone backwards to the Libretto.
 
Sure, ran them back when they were current, and still have a few machines running them. Current Slackware and OpenBSD both run fine. I ran a bunch of different stuff on them when I was using them as my main systems -- Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Slackware, Vector Linux (Slackware based), even Knoppix Live CDs. With 768 MB RAM installed you should have no problem with just installing a modern 32-bit distro.

FYI, what you compile a kernel on has no bearing on the target's hardware, especially if they're both the same basic CPU architecture. For embedded stuff I just build from a 32-bit Slackware install on a VM, on my modern 64-bit workstation. You just have to set GCC flags to make sure you're not auto-picking the CPU optimizations based on the host system. NetBSD's cross compile system makes it even easier, if you want to go the NetBSD route -- you can build from any architecture, to any architecture. That's how you get modern NetBSD packages for stuff like Cobalt RaQs (150-250 MHz MIPS CPU) or old sun4m systems, without it taking ages.
 
What glitch says is very true. I suspect that I can put together an x86 kernel on my Orange Pi PC running Armbian. I certainly compile ARM code on my x86 PC.
 
Anyone do a Socket 7 K6-2 or K6-III Linux build back in the day? I'm doing a Socket 7 build to run Linux and would like to know what Linux version & core you used....

I ran a server for a radio station for live streaming audio on a K6-II 400 in a VA-503+ motherboard that I just decommissioned a few months back; it had two hard drives in it that came from the previous server build (Super Micro dual Pentium Pro); one of the drives had run for twenty years (a 6GB Western Digital Caviar) and the other for 16-17 years (30GB Maxtor).

OS of choice was Red Hat Linux 5.2 (NOT Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5; 1997-vintage Red Hat Linux 5.2, aka 'Apollo'). Red Hat was the only reasonably-priced supported OS for the Progressive Networks RealAudioServer, which was the standard of the day. I say reasonably-priced because I actually purchased the 'boxed set' for $49.

I have run early CentOS on that age hardware; CentOS 6 I don't think will boot on i586-class hardware, but the K6-II was billed as i686 so it might. CentOS 4 (out of support) will boot on that age hardware. The only K6 I have in production right now is running Fedora Core 1:
Code:
[root@webcam3 root]# cat /etc/redhat-release
Fedora Core release 1 (Yarrow)
[root@webcam3 root]# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor	: 0
vendor_id	: AuthenticAMD
cpu family	: 5
model		: 8
model name	: AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor
stepping	: 12
cpu MHz		: 300.694
cache size	: 64 KB
fdiv_bug	: no
hlt_bug		: no
f00f_bug	: no
coma_bug	: no
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 1
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 pge mmx syscall 3dnow k6_mtrr
bogomips	: 599.65

[root@webcam3 root]#

The dmesg output:
Code:
Linux version 2.4.22-1.2129.nptl_24.rhfc1.at (bachbuilder@heretic.physik.fu-berlin.de) (gcc version 3.2.3 20030422 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.3-6)) #1 Fri Dec 12 20:11:09 EST 2003
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0800 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000008000000 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fffe0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
128MB LOWMEM available.
ACPI: have wakeup address 0xc0001000
On node 0 totalpages: 32768
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 28672 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
DMI not present.
ACPI: Unable to locate RSDP
Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 300.694 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 599.65 BogoMIPS
Memory: 126120k/131072k available (1356k kernel code, 4564k reserved, 1076k data, 120k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
CPU: L1 I Cache: 32K (32 bytes/line), D cache 32K (32 bytes/line)
CPU:     After generic, caps: 008021bf 808029bf 00000000 00000002
CPU:             Common caps: 008021bf 808029bf 00000000 00000002
CPU: AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor stepping 0c
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: AMD K6
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20031002
ACPI: Interpreter disabled.
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd8e9, last bus=2
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
apm: BIOS not found.
Starting kswapd
VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1
Detected PS/2 Mouse Port.
pty: 512 Unix98 ptys configured
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10e
NET4: Frame Diverter 0.46
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 8192K size 1024 blocksize
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
ALI15X3: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:10.0
ALI15X3: chipset revision 193
ALI15X3: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfcb0-0xfcb7, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfcb8-0xfcbf, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
hda: WDC WD136AA, ATA DISK drive
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
blk: queue c03cca60, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hdc: Hitachi CV 6.1.2, CFA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 26564832 sectors (13601 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=1653/255/63, (U)DMA
hdc: attached ide-disk driver.
hdc: task_no_data_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: task_no_data_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
hdc: 15744 sectors (8 MB) w/1KiB Cache, CHS=246/2/32
Partition check:
 hda: hda1 hda2 hda3
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
ide: late registration of driver.
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
Initializing Cryptographic API
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 1024 buckets, 8Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 16384)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 158k freed
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
EXT3-fs: INFO: recovery required on readonly filesystem.
EXT3-fs: write access will be enabled during recovery.
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: recovery complete.
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 120k freed
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
PCI: Enabling device 00:14.0 (0000 -> 0002)
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 00:14.0. Please try using pci=biosirq.
usb-ohci.c: found OHCI device with no IRQ assigned. check BIOS settings!
usb.c: registered new driver hiddev
usb.c: registered new driver hid
hid-core.c: v1.8.1 Andreas Gal, Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>
hid-core.c: USB HID support drivers
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,2), internal journal
Adding Swap: 257032k swap-space (priority -1)
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,1), internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
Intel(R) PRO/100 Network Driver - version 2.3.18-k1
Copyright (c) 2003 Intel Corporation

divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
e100: selftest OK.
e100: eth0: Intel(R) PRO/100 Network Connection
  Hardware receive checksums enabled
  cpu cycle saver enabled

8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.26
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth1
eth1: SMC1211TX EZCard 10/100 (RealTek RTL8139) at 0xc8887c00, 00:e0:29:6f:19:92, IRQ 10
eth1:  Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8139B'
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
eth1: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
 hdc: hdc1 hdc2
Linux video capture interface: v1.00
i2c-core.o: i2c core module version 2.8.1 (20031005)
bttv: driver version 0.9.11 loaded
bttv: using 8 buffers with 2080k (520 pages) each for capture
bttv: Host bridge is ALi Corporation M1541
bttv: Bt8xx card found (0).
bttv0: Bt878 (rev 17) at 02:00.0, irq: 11, latency: 132, mmio: 0xfdfff000
bttv0: using: BT878(LMLBT4) [card=110,insmod option]
LMLBT4x init
bttv0: using tuner=0
bttv0: registered device video0
bttv0: registered device vbi0
bttv0: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 .. ok
bttv: Bt8xx card found (1).
bttv1: Bt878 (rev 17) at 02:01.0, irq: 11, latency: 132, mmio: 0xfdffd000
bttv1: using: BT878(LMLBT4) [card=110,insmod option]
LMLBT4x init
bttv1: using tuner=0
bttv1: registered device video1
bttv1: registered device vbi1
bttv: Bt8xx card found (2).
bttv2: Bt878 (rev 17) at 02:02.0, irq: 11, latency: 132, mmio: 0xfdffb000
bttv2: using: BT878(LMLBT4) [card=110,insmod option]
LMLBT4x init
bttv2: using tuner=0
bttv2: registered device video2
bttv2: registered device vbi2
bttv: Bt8xx card found (3).
bttv3: Bt878 (rev 17) at 02:03.0, irq: 11, latency: 132, mmio: 0xfdff9000
bttv3: using: BT878(LMLBT4) [card=110,insmod option]
LMLBT4x init
bttv3: using tuner=0
bttv3: registered device video3
bttv3: registered device vbi3
bttv0: PLL can sleep, using XTAL (28636363).
spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.
[root@webcam3 root]#

It's a webcam capture machine with one of the Linux Media Labs four-channel BT878 cards in it, and it still does the job it was installed to do back in January of 2004. Yeah, it's been running continuously since 2004, rebooted nightly (BT878 card lockups if let run more than a few days, easier to reboot nightly).

Uptime information:
Code:
[root@webcam3 root]# date                                       
Mon Oct  9 19:20:09 EDT 2017
[root@webcam3 root]# uptime
 19:20:10  up 21:44,  1 user,  load average: 0.10, 0.10, 0.03
[root@webcam3 root]#
 
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I recall that K6 is missing a critical instruction for later Linux releases. To wit:

The following processors, supported in jessie, are now unspported:

* AMD K5, K6, K6-2 (aka K6 3D), K6-3
* DM&P/SiS Vortex86, Vortex86SX
* Cyrix III, MediaGX, MediaGXm
* IDT Winchip C6, Winchip 2
* Intel Pentium, Pentium with MMX
* Rise mP6
* VIA C3 'Samuel 2', C3 'Ezra'

I don't know if you can re-build the kernel to support pre-PII CPUs. So use something earlier than the "Jessie" kernel or use OpenBSD or NetBSD. Maybe FreeBSD--I haven't tried it.
 
So basically Jessie is now i686 only?

Slackware 32-bit still supports down to i486, and will in fact boot on a 486.
 
I'm a quite a fan of Xandros 2.0 Linux with extra repositories added to install some extra applications. I have it running on my P1 200mmx machine. Its quite a reasonably small install of about 500megs depending on the options you choose. Picked up the network card and had correct video drivers. I replaced Red Hat 7.3 with it due to its better usb support.
 
So basically Jessie is now i686 only?

Slackware 32-bit still supports down to i486, and will in fact boot on a 486.

It's unclear if Jessie is the last to support P1-class or it's the first that doesn't.

I recall getting a rude surprise when booting the installation CD on my K6 and finding out the Ubuntu 12.04 required PAE. Fortunately, after the dust settled, there were several workarounds that were developed.
 
I'm fairly certain I ran Xubuntu 12.04 on my Pentium MMX.. Though it's possible I might have used Debian 6 or 7 with XFCE. It's been a few years lol.

EDIT: My googling confirms that Xubuntu 12.04 did NOT require PAE while Ubuntu 12.04 did.

Another workaround was to install 11.10 and upgrade to 12.04 to get around the PAE requirement.
 
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I ran Ubuntu 5.10 on a K6 machine briefly before I upgraded to a PIII. Now mind you that was something like 12 years ago. It did work fantastic though for the year and a half I used it.
You are insane to try and get a modern distro working. Feature creep aside it was like back in day yonder when the goal was to make everything try and run Linux. In the end you might get it installed with a window manager but the moment you tried running anything on it made you find the poor optimization was hiding in the shrubs.
 
I've been reading that Ubuntu is getting ready to drop support for all 32 bit processors in the very near future. This brings up another question - has anyone considered making a "retro only" distribution? I'm thinking that such a distribution would support anything from the i386 upwards, with app/browser support based on target system/performance. Ideas?
 
There are also some 'low end machine' micro-distros out there like DSL (Damn Small Linux) that would work great on older systems, and will even run on a 486DX with 16mb.

There's also Puppy linux that has the 5.x Wary edition which should run pretty darned well on a K6-2
 
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I've got a K6-2 based desktop I'm about to try Xubuntu 12.04 on. I'll report back my findings. I have less than 200mb of ram in it, so it should be fun :p
 
There are also some 'low end machine' micro-distros out there like DSL (Damn Small Linux) that would work great on older systems, and will even run on a 486DX with 16mb.

Yeah DSL can be installed as a full debian system. Tried to run it on my 386DX25 yesterday but no joy.
 
Yeah DSL can be installed as a full debian system. Tried to run it on my 386DX25 yesterday but no joy.

386 support was dropped in the Linux kernel a long time ago. The last distro I found that supported the 386 was Slackware 7.1 circa 2000. I found the Raspberry Pi Foundation's Debian release (https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspberry-pi-desktop/) to be a nice 32 bit for low end hardware. I ran it on my 400MHz, 384MB Celeron laptop just fine.
 
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