Re: First FAQ draft, please read this

["Markus Illenseer" <markus%tiger.teuto.de@localhost>]

Wolfgang Solfrank wrote:
> While I had quite a few discussions with Jason during the late stages of
> the port, he didn't contribute to it (yet).

 Nor did I yet, ok, he will be removed :-)

> Most likely 604e and probably 704 should work, too.  On the other hand,
> I'm not aware of anyone who tested this on anything but 603 and 604.

 704?  Oh, never heard of that one.  I now remember that I have access to
an old 601/75 IBM machine.  No idea if this one has OFW. I bet not.

> I don't think that it was tested with 8MB.  I've always run it on 64MB
> machines, but I don't know what would be the absolute minimum.

 I did that testing. I had 8MB as a start, then upgraded to 32MB.

> This isn't an option for the PowerPC port.  MACHINE_NONCONTIG, while
> being introduced to support machines with non-contiguous memory, defines a
> somewhat different internal interface between the machine independent (vm) and
> the machine dependent (pmap) routines.  So even on machines with only one
> chunk of contiguous memory, it is required to use this options line.

 Ok, will be removed.  I wasn't sure how OFW or your loader handles
non-contig memory situations.

> There currently isn't support for tape drives in NetBSD/powerpc (but it
> should be quite easy to integrate it).

 Iks, I forgot about that. I could be in need of that quite soon anyway :-)

> More relevant probably is the fact that OpenFirmware is also part of the
> PPCP (aka CHRP) standard, since this is the reason that Be, Motorola and
> IBM are working on support for it.

 Damned, of curse I meant PPCP.  Maybe I shouldn't even start to mention
about PREP and CHRP at all, but always speak about PPCP and have a
definition about that somewhere.

> Development of NetBSD/powerpc was on a FirePower MX 4100 machine.

 I bet it would run on any FirePower.

> The PowerMacs with PCI bus all had OpenFirmware from the very start.

 Oh, and does NetBSD/powerpc run?

> Should probably mention http://WWW.NetBSD.ORG.

 Not *yet* - let me finish the FAQ.

>       * Marshall Kirk McKusick, et al.: The Design and Implementation of
>  the 4.4BSD Operating System

 *Sic* This book is a very valuable source, pity that it is that expensive.

> What is PowerPCDOS? PowerPCOS?

 A bad Search&Replace. Means MS-DOS or WinNT.

> To be complete there is also Linux for Power Macintosh. See for example
> http://product.info.apple.com/pr/press.releases/1995/q2/960205.pr.rel.osf.html.

 And Linux for Be. Any pointer on that?

> AFAIK HPFS is the filesystem primarily used in OS/2, while NT primarily
> uses NTFS instead.  But I don't know enough about those to even decide
> whether these might be the same.

 They no longer are the same.  NTFS is able to access upto 4 Hexabyte,
whereas HPFS only can access 4GB.  Among other, smaller differences, this
is the most important.  I meant NTFS.

> Again, I really appreciate your effort, and I'd like it if you could
> maintain this further.

 No problem.  And I want to maintain it for a while at least.  If I cannot
help on working on the port, I may at least help you to do so in killing
all possible questions :-)

 What you may have guessed from the text and the errors - the FAQ is based
upon another FAQ.  I yet have to complete it to be dedicated to
NetBSD/powerpc.

-- 
Markus Illenseer