Re: NetBSD-CyberstormPPC ???

[is%beverly.rhein.de@localhost (Ignatios Souvatzis)]

Hi Mirko,

> Is there a chance to port NetBSD (either NetBSD-Amiga or NetBSD-PPC or a
> combination of these) to the CyberPPC-Board (Phase5). I heard rumours about
> this board not supporting interrupts on the PPC-side and thus being incapable
> of running a real OS on the PPC.

If your rumours are right, forget it.
If my rumours are right, which say it DOES see interupts, it could work.

Now, if you buy such a board, you could do the work... it would be
pretty easy, as nearly all pieces are there. (VM lowlevel code from
netbsd-ppc, and drivers from netbsd/amiga. Most difficult thing to write
would be the boot loader :-)

Of course, if you bought such a board, and convinced Phase5 to provide
the docs, you could hand both to some volunteer... I know at least 1.5
people interested to do the work.

> Symmetrical multiprocessing sure will be hard to implement as far as I know,
> but maybe there could be support for the PPC-CPU, RAM, SCSI and Graphics.

Well, as the 68k cpu is much slower, AND different, it wouldnt be
symmetrical. IMO, it isnt worth the effort to use both, unless you use
the 68k cpu for blitting or as DMA controler for some stupid device.

Regards,
        -is
        Ignatios Souvatzis