A/UX on real hardware

So, I've been playing about with Unices on some old 68k Apple hardware. NetBSD supports the hardware fairly well, but I found it was fussy about the various SCSI to IDE/CF-card adapters available. In the end, SCSI2SD seems to be the best overall, with MacOS, NetBSD and Linux all working fine with this. Definitely recommended for old kit.

I prepared an EMILE based bootable ISO of the latest m68k Linux release. This got to the installer on my Quadra 610, but failed to get that far on my LC III. I thought I'd try something else.. A/UX. And it worked! I had to use a real CD-ROM drive. For some reason, the CD-ROM emulation provided by SCSI2SD is enough to get Linux to boot, but not enough to get an HFS CD-ROM image to mount under MacOS. In the end I bought a CD-ROM drive off eBay, and added the suitable "System Enabler" to the A/UX install floppy. And it worked!

If I get an external case for this CD-ROM drive, or just buy a suitable external Apple SCSI CD-ROM drive, I could try to install A/UX on my LC III. The LC III is listed as unsupported, as A/UX needs an FPU - well, I added one to mine, so it's worth a shot. The LC 475 is supported, I'm not sure how different these are in terms of on-board devices.