On Wed, 12 Jan 2000, Roger Brown wrote:

> My assumptions are...
> 
> 2. Porting NetBSD driver code to linux is non-trivial.

As David pointed out, porting NetBSD driver code to the mk microkernel is
not hard. Many files there started out in NetBSD. :-)

> Possible solutions are as follows...
> 
> 2. Somehow create an OpenFirmware booter as a MacOS application that could
> start either linuxppc or NetBSD/macppc. (by that I mean have a MacOS
> application that adds a lump of code into memory that emulates the
> OpenFirmware ROMs).

The problem with "emulating" the OF ROMs is that NetBSD eventually takes
over all the RAM, and so it'd be tricky to keep this pseudo OF around.

> 3. Use a distinct Booter as used for NetBSD/mac68k in order to boot
> NetBSD/macppc on a non PCI Mac.

This idea isn't too bad, and is what will be needed for non-OF machines.
There already is a booter, bootX, which should be fine. The only trick
would be that it would need to use a non-standard entry point. That way
one kernel could boot on either an OF or non-OF machine.

> If some form of MacOS booter were created for the PPC, the LC 630 support in
> NetBSD/mac68k could then be added to NetBSD/macppc.

Yep!

> On reflection the MacOS psuedo-OpenFirmware booter looks the most elegant
> solution, but adding support the 'hard' way to mklinux looks like the
> quickest solution. 

Well, we like to keep talking to OF once we've booted, more so than Linux
does I think. That might be a problem.

Take care,

Bill