Subject: Re: NetBSD for BeBox?
To: Jake Hamby <jehamby@lightside.com>
From: Markus Illenseer <markus@tiger.teuto.de>
List: port-powerpc
Date: 10/07/1996 16:11:30
Jake Hamby wrote:
> However, it has a Flash ROM and I've forwarded your message to Be
> developer support as a plea for OpenFirmware support in future ROM
> upgrades.
This would require more than just "support". It took Motorola about half
a year to develop the OFW for the Atlas/Ultra boards, and another half a
year for the easy-to-use GUI just to be able to boot NT and Solaris.
> I have a feeling they will support this eventually for ease
> of hardware support alone, especially for video (currently the BeBox
> uses standard PC video cards which is a big problem for initialization,
> because the PowerPC can't run the x86 boot BIOS).
This is the main purpose of OFW...
> This brings me to another question: Doesn't the PowerMac claim to
> support OpenFirmware? I would guess that this support is very limited,
> though, and probably useless for a NetBSD port, which is unfortunate.
Future PowerMac will most probably have a small fragment of OFW, which
will start the MacOS from the ROM sitting in a socket on the PPCP.
> However, with MkLinux source available, I would hope that, even though
> they can't use the same source tree, NetBSD/be and NetBSD/powermac are
> now in sight!
Fee. I want them all under the same tree, just change the bootloader.
--
Markus Illenseer