Subject: Re: Boot Floppy Available
To: Wilko Bulte <wilko@yedi.iaf.nl>
From: Chris G. Demetriou <cgd@pa.dec.com>
List: port-alpha
Date: 10/20/1997 15:27:33
> Maybe I'm annoying but: could you please build the same thing
> with options JESUS_KNOWS so that I can try it on different systems
> taht are not officially supported right now (4100, 2100, 1000, Jensen).

That doesn't make sense.  Generic kernel configurations (of which the
ramdisk kernel is a derivative) include code which allows them to work
on all systems supported by NetBSD/alpha.

If there's no support for a system, a kernel won't run on it (for very
long at least; it'll print out a message that the system is
unsupported, then halt).  You can't really do much more than that.
"Support" for a system includes all of the low-level code which
controls how it's I/O bus is attached, how interrupts are configured,
how the console is configured, etc.

In other words, unsupported systems really are unsupported, and you
can't run NetBSD/alpha on unsupported systems.  8-)


chris