On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 14, 2002 at 11:35:15AM -0800, Bill Studenmund wrote:
> > True. But part of my point is that to the users, they (NuBus and PCI
> > PowerMacs) are the same class of machines, while I think most users
> > would consider hp300 and sun3 to be different machines. They run the same
> > MacOS, so where's the difference (speaking from a user's point of view).
>
> Now, I actually agree with what you're saying, Bill (I said it
> myself, really), but just to play Devil's advocate we don't seem

Playing Devil's Advocate is fine. It makes sure I've thought about what
I'm saying. :-)

> to have people complaining about NetBSD's not supporting sun3, sparc,
> and sparc64 machines with the same port.
>
> Different processors are more user-evident than different buses? You
> sure? :^>

In those cases, I think so. Both the sparc and ultrasparc CPUs had
marketing hype around them. They were marketed as different things. The
SPARC was marketed as better than the m68k sun machines. The ultraSPARC
was marketed as a 64-bit CPU (at least as I understand it). So these
differences were user-visable.

While there was a marketing difference for the PCI PowerMacs, they were
still PowerMacs. Yes, the 604 was better than the 601, and the G3 better
than the 604. But the differences weren't as big from what I saw of the
marketing.

> I don't think anybody would argue that the easiest way to get
> support for nubus macs into the tree is in a separate port. Whether
> or not that eventually merges with macppc is something that can be
> dealt with later.

?? I think there was a typo above.

> > Also, if we want to use the Apple booters (which would be nice), we have
> > to be able to quiesce (sp?) OF (or run with it quiesced). To be able to
> > run w/o OF callbacks is most of the same problem as running on NuBus
> > boxes. So if we solve it for one, we solve it for the other. :-)
>
> Erm. Sort of. Except that OF macs know nothing of nubus. ;^>
>
> (Fortunately, we've already got some nubus. How much of that depends
> on the mac68k's Mac OS-sourced booter?)

Not much as I recall. We pass in some info about where the graphics card
is, but that's it. Allen would know more.

Also, for the NuBus machines, we could require you use BootX or whatever
the booter is. We will then be in posession of a faked-up OF tree
describing the NuBus devices present. :-)

> > I do realize we also have to support the 601,
>
> Speaking of that, I now have (thanks to Donald Lee, whom I owe $22
> for shipping... I'll mail it tomorrow now that I've been reminded,
> Donald) a 7200 motherboard to stuff in one of my spare 7x00 cases.
>
> I'd like to at least try at 601 support. Anyone already there? Any
> book recomendations?

Ask Jason. He was going to play with this at one point.

> > Actually they dropped the OF 1.0.5 PCI machines too. They only support
> > machines Apple shipped with a G3 or G4.
>
> I've always wondered whether that had more to do with the processor
> or with OF...

I don't know. :-)

Take care,

Bill