On Thu, 21 Nov 2002, John Klos wrote:

> > I also have a PowerMac 8100, which not only has the 601, but also no
> > open firmware. Is there any development going on to get NetBSD to boot
> > on firmware-less boxes? I'd also be happy to work on this (but one thing
> > at a time - gotta get the cpu support first...)
> 
> Since the first gen PowerMacs were much more like Quadras than like Open
> Firmware machines, it'd be a lot less work to use stuff from mac68k, like
> the booter, the hardware driver and NuBus code, and so on. A native booter
> for mac68k was never a high priority, so I can see the same being true for
> first gen PowerMac.

Just to pick nits, the -second- generation PowerMacs were more like 68k
than like OF machines.  The -first- generation PowerMacs are pretty much
half-way.

The second generation PowerMacs -- that is, the 52/53/62/63xx family --
are Quadra 630 machines with a slight re-rev to about three chips and a
PowerPC card merged into the motherboard layout.

The first generation PowerMacs -- that is, the {6,7,8,9}1xx family -- have
lots of hardware in common with the PCI PowerMacs (and AV Quadras).  They
use MACE ethernet, 53C(F)94 SCSI, and CUDA adb.  They have an interrupt
controller that is similar to what is found on PCI PowerMacs.  Not
identical, mind you, but completely unlike what you have on 68k machines.

The only really gross 68k-ism on the first gen PowerMacs would be the
non-contiguous memory, but that shouldn't be too hard to deal with, I
don't think....


> Didn't someone play around with making the booter load a kernel on PPC and
> having it start that kernel?

Sounds familiar, yeah.



David

---------------------------------------------------------------------
David A. Gatwood                                dgatwood@gatwood.net
Developer Docs Writer                             dgatwood@apple.com
Apple Computer                                  dgatwood@mklinux.org

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