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Content by Christian Hansen (original archived HERE). Edited by Major Tom.
Last content update: 11 Feb 2001
Note: Most files linked from these pages are missing unfortunately.
Disclaimer: The information presented here is decades old and relevant only for legacy linux distros.
Your situation: The Linux distribution at hand, do not support the hardware of your MCA
based machine.
The remedy: Try a tweaked kernel, before throwing the distro away.
In most cases, when Red Hat, and other distributions of Linux, say that they do not support
MCA based machines, they are in fact referring to the core part of the operating system
dealing with hardware, aka the kernel. When it comes to the application part, such as
the Apache webserver etcetera, that is: All the functionality Linux software provides around
hardware and kernel - it will most probably work, if you can smuggle in a MCA supporting kernel
between your hardware and the rest of the distro.
Metaphorically speaking: Suppose you have a DOS installation; COMMAND.COM, MSCDEX.EXE, and
every other file is ok, but you have a rotten Io.sys, which prevents your
machine from coming up. Getting a suitable Io.sys would make your machine work.
There is of course more to it than that, but we won't scare you off with a ton of technical
stuff right now.
Before you throw yourself into this, check the links below. Maybe someone made a ready to go
install diskette for your distro.
The enterprise of smuggling a MCA kernel in between your hardware and distro, can be broken
down into four elements:
1 Figuring out, how your install diskette looks like.
There is an easy approach to fix the installation diskette, if your distro has a
DOS filesystem and a separate bootloader.
2 Figuring out your needs, and choosing a kernel
At least the kernel should support your floppy and disk controllers, to get anything
off the ground.
The easy way of kernel replacement using regular Windows - Dos copy functionality.
3 Modification of installation diskette. Still working on it
Getting out of the catch 22, and doing the replacement form a running Linux system.
4 Post-install modification of system boot
Putting the kernel on your harddrive, and telling Linux how to boot.
When you have come this far, you should have your distro installed. This is not the same thing,
as having everything set up as you would want it. You might for instance have a bloated kernel
with a lot of stuff you really don't need, and lacking something you need. But it is as far as
this page goes. Have fun.
Links to other sites with Linux MCA specifics
Ready made install floppies for Red Hat 6.0. I made those
myself :-)
Red Hat 6.1. Avoid like the plague, MCA and otherwise. They introduced a new language for
the install procedure, and didn't got it right.
Ready made install floppies for
Suse 6.4 and Red Hat 6.2.
Ready made install floppies for
SuSe 6.0, 6.1, 6.3.
(This is also where mca scsi is
maintained!)
If your distro did not support MCA, you can not rely a 100 pct on the source code it dumped
on your hard drive during install. If you want to make your own customized post install
kernel, begin a good source tree here. A quick note on
device drivers. It is quite common, that MCA adapters use the drivers of their ISA cousins, with
slight modifications. When you build a new kernel, don't despair if you can't find your device
in *make menuconfig* Try and figure out what the ISA equivalent is. Some instances are: The
Adaptec 1640 SCSI controller uses the 1542 driver, 3Com529 uses the
3C509 driver, something equal with BusLogic.
Su Wadlow has done some
major surgery, including how to make your own kernel.
Don P has something on the PS/2 E,
not to speak of calculating modelines,
when you get into XFree GUI.
Alfred Arnold did something
on drivers for ethernet cards. I am not quite sure if it all went into mainstream source or
when. At least you got a link. AA also did a performance test of various ethers.
Token Ring central point.
If you didn't find the socalled official MCA Linux homepage in one of the above,
Click here. There is also a
newsgroup in html though.
This link is really
not MCA specific, but I couldn't help it. For highbrows on making NAT, and actually hard to find
out there - uncovered ground, mostly left to Cisco hardware.
There is probably much more out there.
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