Re: Dual core Power Mac G5

[Michael <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost>]

Hello,

On Nov 11, 2008, at 8:09 AM, Toru Nishimura wrote:

> I got dual core Power Mac G5 (the last model w/ PCIe) as a mean of  
> day time work to earn.

I got one too :)

> With 8.5GB equipped it's a nice toy to play.  When things get  
> settled down, I would
> like to try NetBSD/macppc.  My Q is; how well can NetBSD run DC  
> 64bit machine these days?

macppc doesn't do LP64 at all. Since the G5 doesn't share a lot of  
hardware with earlier Macs we can probably lump them together with  
ofppc64.
We have support to run some 64bit PowerPCs in OEA bridge mode ( Tim  
made that happen on some POWER3 box ) but that only lets you use up to  
2GB of RAM. Also, I still need to write support for the PCIe host  
bridge ( it's an IBM CPC945, the datasheet is freely available. I  
spent some time reading and it's got 'Power Macintosh' written all  
over it. ), the audio chip ( actually the same old DMA engine with new  
codecs, probably the only hw inherited from older Macs ), the system  
management unit ( does what the PMU does in earlier models but it's  
Yet Another Gratuituous Incompatibility - new command set, new  
communication scheme, apparently it uses the CPC945's i2c debug port  
to access RAM.
I kinda-sorta succeeded getting my G5 booted over the network ( hint:  
the firmware wants your DHCP server to have the 'authoritative' flag  
set and you can feed it the kernel directly, without ofwboot.xcf ) but  
the kernel dies very early in the process. The early rasops console  
appears to work though, I got a few lines of output with wrong colours  
( meaning it wasn't OF_write() ). Didn't make it to CPU attachment  
though.
I've been busy getting native Xorg going on all kinds of different  
hardware, hopefully I'll have time for the G5 very soon. Of course,  
any help is more than welcome.

have fun
Michael