Subject: Re: pica port - when SGI ???
To: Scott Telford <st@epcc.ed.ac.uk>
From: Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com <michaelv@HeadCandy.com>
List: current-users
Date: 03/13/1996 21:48:53
>> Unless I am as ignorant as many believe, I understand the r4400 is
>> one of the CPU types that SGI boxes use. This gives us some level
>> of CPU support for the SGI machines in the future. Is anyone even
>> considering NetBSD/sgi or whatever ?

>An SGI Iris 4D-series port may be fairly straightforward (basically
>there's one kind of SCSI host adaptor, the WD33C93, and one kind of
>Ethernet chip, which I've forgotten, at least on the low-to-mid range
>systems) except for frame buffer support: if you had an SGI workstation
>I guess you would want to use the frame buffer (8-) but there are
>zillions of different ones (GT, GTX, VTX, XL, XS, XZ, Elan, Extreme...)
>on the various models and I doubt any of them are publically documented
>at a sufficiently low level.

Has anyone considered enlisting the help of SGI, as a partner?  The
Linux folks seem to have been pretty successful, thus far, doing that
with DEC on the Alpha port, and Apple with the PowerMac/OFS thing.

It might be a hard sell, but if NetBSD is really the best free "unix"
around, as most of us believe, then why shouldn't we make them believe
it, too?

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  Michael L. VanLoon                                 michaelv@HeadCandy.com
       --<  Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x  >--
     NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, HP300, Sun3, Sun4,
                           DEC PMAX (MIPS), DEC Alpha, PC532
     NetBSD ports in progress: VAX, Atari 68k, others...
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