Re: NetBSD and the 68030 MMU

[Andrew Cagney <cagney%tpgi.com.au@localhost>]

>> NetBSD/powerpc already `go'es.  It's my understanding that these
>> PCI-based Macs use OpenFirmware, and load an XCOFF bootstrap.  If
>> this is indeed the case, with a small program to convery a.out to
>> XCOFF, NetBSD/powerpc might Just Work on such Macs (albeit using the
>> firmware for all i/o).

>Well, it's probably a bit more work than that.  While I don't know enough
>(actually nearly nothing) about Apple's OpenFirmware implementation, I assume
>that the partitioning scheme of the Macs is different from the one on PCs
>(which was adopted by PReP and PPCP).  So it's quite likely that the
>disk label handling code needs some work, too.

>Just a minor nit.

Hopefully much of what is needed here is described in the CHRP OB
bindings document (see http://playground.sun.com/p1275/).  Near
the end of this document the process of figuring out the disk label is
described in a reasonable amount of detail.

For CHRP, I believe that apple should be:

        o       fdisk partition the disk

        o       within an fdisk partition
                put all its MAC partitions

The only question then is, what have the done on existing mac's.

                        Andrew