On Sun, 19 Dec 1999, Bob Nestor wrote:

> David A. Gatwood  (dgatwood@deepspace.mklinux.org) wrote:
> 
> >Actually, BootX doesn't require OF.  MkLinux can boot directly via BootX,
> >even on {6/7/8}100's.  Granted, this has only been the case for about two
> >weeks, but....  ;-)
> >
> >However, I have no idea how well BootX could be modified to suit
> >NetBSD-mac68k....
> 
> BootX only runs on PCI based machines, or did last time I checked.  I 

Nope.  A couple of weeks ago, an MkLinux hacker got it booting MkLinux
directly on a... 6100, I believe.  Definitely NuBus, anyway.  PCI support
for MkLinux actually came later, since another MkLinux hacker had to
modify the OF tree parsing code to recognize the BootX-style OF tree.  :-)
So yay, no more proprietary Apple-built booter!  (After the dust settles
and the bugs are all worked out....)

For x100's and stuff, it just passes in an empty OF tree.  The critical
info, like the video base and size, resolution, bit depth, gestalt, and
DRAM bank size and locations are all obtained from MacOS, not OF, so
there's no problem there.


> don't believe any 68k Mac uses PCI and certainly some of the early PPC 
> Macs didn't.  It would be nice to have something like BootX available and 
> have it pass the necessary info to the kernel just like Booter does now.  

What additional information do you need passed in?  All OF really gives
you is addresses, types, and sizes of chips, which is only useful if you
don't already have that information and don't have ways of probing for the
chips.  All the info that would be interesting to an existing OS is
obtained from MacOS before BootX blasts it out of memory.


> That would allow us to run on even more systems like my non-PCI based 
> 603e. The problem, which I think Nigel was really addressing, is there's 
> no easy way to obtain the information that is nicely packaged up in Open 
> Firmware.

To some extent, this is true, although the 603e machines are at least
somewhat documented, I think.  BTW, I'm still working on getting the 6214
to boot MkLinux, but it's delayed while we track down some installer and
filesystem corruption bugs.  :-|


Later,
David