On Nov 15, 2005, at 4:11 PM, William Duke wrote:

> No, I haven't looked into any of that yet.  I figured that I  
> shouldn't get
> too far ahead of myself.  What I mean, is that I figured it should  
> probably
> be best to determine if NetBSD will even run on the 7200, before I  
> looked
> into running X on the 7200.  (I want to run NetBSD whether it decently
> supports X or not.)

It is close to working, or may be working with current.

http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2005/05/01/0001.html

> I'm curious as to why the NetBSD community sticks to open firmware  
> booting,
> when the open firmware imposes so many restructions on so many  
> Macintosh
> models.   For example, my 7300/200 runs NetBSD just beautifully,  
> but OF
> limits my X usage to 256 colors at a maximum resolution of  
> 640x480.  The
> machine, as it sits, is capable of much higher resolutions and much  
> greater
> color depth.

OpenFirmware only limits X when you use Xmacppc. We don't have a  
video driver for /chaos/control, fbdev support, or an FBdev Xserver.  
We/X.org/XF86 will gladly accept code contributions.

We still need openfirmware console around:
a.) debugging boot time and kernel loading
b.) we don't have frame buffer drivers for anything other than pre  
rage 128 ATI rage/mach32/mach64 cards and 3Dfx cards.
c.) slow console is better than no console
d.) 256 color X is better than no X

Apple has run the gamut of display drivers:
- custom ASICs
- Valkyre/Control/Platinum
- Cirrus Logic
- S3/SonicBlue
- ATI mach32/mach64/mach264/Rage/Rage II/Rage Pro
- ATI Rage 128
- ATI Radeon
- nVidia GeForce 2/3/4

> I guess I'm just wondering what advantages OF affords the NetBSD Mac
> community?   Aside from the obvious shortened boot time and the  
> unnecessary
> Mac OS partition, what real advantages are there to using OF?

Aside from the fact that it initializes and configures almost every  
single piece of hardware in the computer and should be directly  
bootable; not needing to deal with a second operating system to  
configure and boot with no benefit comes to mind.