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• Background
• Device Information
• Port Information
  • Support Matrix
  • Installing & Building
  • Downloads
    • Obsoleted Patches:
  • Feedback
• Links
  • General
  • Silicon Reference Guides
  • Missing Documentation

Background

The IBM Network Station 1000 box (IBM part number 8362-A53) was purchased on eBay for $20 including shipping. It is fitted with 64MB of RAM, but has no other storage devices. The CPU in this one is a 200MHz PowerPC 603ev. It was the subject of my first platform port effort - a whole two days of effort to get it running, plus another couple of days to clean it up.

I also information about running Linux on this platform in my Linux area.

Device Information

TBD

Port Information

Support Matrix

Feature	Supported	Notes
Basic Kernel	Yes	Uses ramdisk for root file system.
RAM Autosize	No	Can be read from IBM 82660 PCI host bridge.
Network	Yes	Uses Am79c971 PCnet-FAST (pcn) & ICS1890 PHY (icsphy).
NFS Root FS	No
Video	No	Video chip is S3 Trio.
wscons	No
IDE	No	Connector needs to be soldered in.
Audio	No
PCMCIA	No

Installing & Building

This platform port, and the associated patch, have been tested on -current as of April 19, 2003. The port should work on any version later than that (there is an important fix in the PowerPC bus_dma.c file that is needed, and was committed on April 18, 2003), though there may be some clashes with the patch - check the results of the patching very carefully.

This version only supports the root file system in a ram disk too; support for an NFS root file system will be added later.

The following steps are how I installed and built it for testing (it assumes that you have the -current source tree in ~/Current/src):

1. Create a directory for the tools, object files and destination of the build's installs. I make this at the same level as the src directory, so I end up with this structure:

      ~/Current/src                - NetBSD sources
               /ibmnws/obj         - OBJDIR
                      /root        - DESTDIR
                      /tools       - TOOLDIR
   

2. Unpack this archive into the src directory. That will add the following the directories, and their contents:

      .../src/distrib/ibmnws       - ramdisk creation
             /tools/ncdcs          - checksum tool (host version)
             /sys/arch/ibmnws      - platform port
             /usr.bin/ncdcs        - checksum tool
   

3. Apply the patches:

          patch -p0 < patch-20030419
          patch -p1 < ibmnws-20030513.patch
   

   Check that all of the changes apply without any rejections.
4. Build as follows:

      ./build.sh -T ~/Current/ibmnws/tools \
                 -D ~/Current/ibmnws/root \
                 -O ~/Current/ibmnws/obj \
                 -U -m ibmnws build
   

   Obviously, change the directory names to match your installation if necessary.
5. Build the kernel:

      ./build.sh -T ~/Current/ibmnws/tools \
                 -D ~/Current/ibmnws/root \
                 -O ~/Current/ibmnws/obj \
                 -U -m ibmnws kernel=IBMNWS
   

6. Add the tools bin directory to your path.

      csh:
          set path=(~/Current/ibmnws/tools/bin $path)
      sh (and similar):
          export PATH=~/Current/ibmnws/tools/bin:$PATH
   

7. Build the ramdisk and final bootable image:

      cd distrib/ibmnws
      nbmake-ibmnws
   

That should get you an image called netbsd-IBMNWS.1000 in the distrib/ibmnws/netboot/kernel directory. Copy this image to somewhere that you network station box can boot it from. I use NFS to mount a directory where this image lives, but TFTP should also work fine.

Downloads

• IBMNWS-20030504.tar.gz: Platform port + patch for -current as of April 19, 2003.
• ibmnws-20030513.patch: Patch to update platform port.

Obsoleted Patches:

• ibmnws-20030504.patch: Patch to update platform port.

Feedback

Please enter any feedback you have about this port here.

Links

General

• Linux Port
  The home page of the Linux port. There is very little information here, but the patch contains many clues about the changes that need to be made to get this platform working. The level of activity (inactivity) in the forums would suggest that there is little active work on this platform in the Linux community at the moment.

• Network Station 1000 HowTo
  A How-To document that covers mostly setting up the box for use as a thin client onto a Linux server using the original IBM/NCD operating system. There is some useful information here about the device's firmware settings though.

• IBM Network Station Thin Client Support
  Contains many links relating to the whole family of Network Station thin clients, but many are dead links, or links to empty pages.

• IBM Network Station Manager V1R3 Software for PC Servers
  This is the place to download the original software for the Network Station. You must register, but it is free to do so. The file you get is a self-extracting archive. You can open it with a ZIP file reader on a Windows box, and simply extract the files necessary to boot the thin client's original OS (see the HowTo link above for information on doing this).

• Network Station Wiki
  A Wiki for those interested in using Linux and the network station family. Very little information here at the moment.

Silicon Reference Guides

• IBM 82660 PCI Host Bridge User's Manual

• PowerPC Microprocessor Family: The Programming Environments for 32-Bit Microprocessors
  (aka the green book)

• PowerPC 603e and EM603e RISC Microprocessor Family User's Manual

• PCnet-FAST Single-Chip Full-Duplex 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Controller for PCI Local Bus

Missing Documentation

• The S3 Trio graphics controller

• The PCI/ISA bridge (IBM Fire Coral)

-- JohnGordon - 06 May 2003