On Wed, 26 Dec 2001, gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 26, 2001 at 12:56:47PM -0800, Bill Studenmund wrote:
> > OF 3 is actually pretty cool; I wish Apple had OF version updates for the
> > old machines. :-)
>
> Well, these things are on PROMs, not [E]EPROMS, so updating would
> mean solder. That said, I'm not so sure one couldn't desolder an OF

Hmmmm... I just had my machine open earlier today to add RAM, and I
thought that the PROM was on its own DIMM (different shape from the
SDRAM). Also, I thought someone had scavanged PROMs from other machines
(2.0 and 2.4), and had boot failures follow the 2.4 PROM regardles of
which MB it was in (there is a MB difference between the early and later
Beige G3s).

So the changability is there. ;-)

> 3 PROM and put it on an OF 1.0.5-based motherboard. Would this
> actually confuse OF 3? Isn't all the basic stuff about the same?
> (PCI device chain, processor identification, so forth.)

I don't think so. Certainly for the 1.0.5 machines, the CPU was different.
They might not have support for different CPUs in different OFs. Also,
part of our problem initially booting on the Blue & White G3s was they
used a different Host->PCI chip than the Beige ones, and we had to add
support.

I know OF 3 machines have EEPROMS; thus the firmware updaters. :-)

> Not that I'll be buying a G4 just to put the PROM in my 7500, of
> course...

Understood. :-)

> I think it's mighty unfortunate that, as good as OF 3 is, it's still
> not up to (Sun) OpenBoot snuff. I mean, Apple basically ripped
> OpenBoot off for OpenFirmware... you'd think they'd at least have
> kept its basic functionality around as a minimum. Oh well.

I'm not familiar with OpenBoot enough to say, but OF 3 does have some cool
stuff (like fs views, you can telnet in for debugging, etc.)

Take care,

Bill