From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Nov 26 14:39:54 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id OAA04342 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 26 Nov 1996 14:39:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA04306 for ; Tue, 26 Nov 1996 14:39:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by who.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with SMTP id KAA12448 for ; Tue, 26 Nov 1996 10:39:08 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id LAA25347; Tue, 26 Nov 1996 11:20:46 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199611261820.LAA25347@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: IBM 57SLC To: kegrotla@korrnet.org (Kjell E Grotland) Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 11:20:46 -0700 (MST) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: from "Kjell E Grotland" at Nov 25, 96 07:54:12 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Oh by the way i have heard a rumour that MAC PowerPCs will support > FreeBSD. Any truth to this. That would be just totally awsome. Running > FreeBSD on a RISC chip machine. Depends. Will they ever be as documented as the Motorolla Ultra 603/604 motherboards Soled by FirePower systems, Arrow Electronics, and used in Motorolla PowerStack systems? I have been unable to get my hands on the touted-for-Linux OSF/Mach hardware interface so far, which is supposedly the only publically available "documentation". Even so, the hardware it applies to is the new Mac's, *NOT* the 6100, 7100, 8100 NuBus systems. So if you can buy it used for a resonable price, it won't run (ever) unless Apple documents it. There is some indication from the NetBSD camp that the Mach code is (like the Tennon Systems MACH-10) running through the ROM's. This means that the drivers are single threaded, non-reentrant, and a huge bottleneck to multiprocessing (hey! Just like running MacOS on top of those same ROM's!). I know I've been arguing for BIOS-based fallback drivers for PC's for forever, but they are not something on which one could safely base an entire port (yes, I know the 1.1.5 PS/2 port which was never released used ABIOS calls; ABIOS is not BIOS is not Mac ROM's). Most likely I will be hacking on a BeBox after the SMP stuff is committed and the Intel MP spec is abstracted under a HAL used by the kernel (surprisingly, PPC based machines don't follow the Intel MP spec... go figure 8-)). Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.