On Tuesday, December 17, 2002, at 04:36 PM, Henry B. Hotz wrote:

> At 12:11 PM -0800 12/17/02, Bryan Vyhmeister wrote:
>> On Tuesday, December 17, 2002, at 11:34 AM, Allen Briggs wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 11:31:28AM -0800, Henry B. Hotz wrote:
>>>> No, it shouldn't, comparatively.  But booting it might be, again
>>>> comparatively.
>>>
>>> It actually should be pretty easy to boot, I'd think.
>>
>> That's what I would think too but since I have not done much 
>> programming at this point I am not sure how to go about it. I am 
>> learning C right now so that I can work on this but I know it is 
>> quite a daunting task for being a first major project. I have 
>> received some excellent suggestions as to where to look for 
>> information and I have ordered some books that should help but I am 
>> still going to need to learn much more about powerpc assembly and 
>> that type of thing.
>
> If you need to learn both C and powerpc assembly then you have a bit 
> of a job ahead of you.

This is true. I know there is a ton of work involved but I am very 
interested and highly motivated to do it!

>> It seems like most of the code is already in NetBSD to deal with most 
>> everything at least partially except for possibly the North bridge 
>> chipset (Articia S), the IBM 750CXe G3 processor, and the PPCBoot 
>> booting mechanism.
>
> Don't know about Articia S, but some kind of Northbridge is supported.

I've never heard of this chipset before either so I really don't know 
what that would take but it couldn't be all that different from most 
other chipsets especially since it is very CHRP-like.

>> I would really like to see this board and future versions work so 
>> that there is a low cost powerpc solution for those that would like 
>> to use the powerpc platform for NetBSD in the form of servers or 
>> other systems at a reduced cost compared to buying new Apple 
>> hardware. The advantage is that this board is much more open than 
>> Apple's designs.
>
> I would like to see affordable alternatives to Apple hardware for 
> PowerPC systems too.  I could also wish the board were as fast as "new 
> Apple hardware", but that's life.

It's not that far off though. The penguinppc people have an prototype 
of a G4 board called the Teron PX which is very similar to the Teron CX 
except with a G4. There are also several other boards in the works that 
are all based on the PowerPC Open Platform (POP). More info on all of 
these is here:

http://penguinppc.org/dev/pop/

http://www.mai.com/products/teron%20px.htm

It seems like the port to the Teron/POP stuff would probably be its own 
port altogether because there seems to be a significant future for new 
and improved hardware rather than just an evaluation board or two.

>> Any suggestions? I am willing to do what it takes to get this working 
>> but it will take me longer than many of you because I have little to 
>> no experience at this type of thing.
>
> You'll need a real working NetBSD machine to do cross-development on. 
> Might be useful for it to be a powerpc as well so I'd recommend a 
> PowerMac 7500 with a 604 (or G3 or G4) upgrade and the original Apple 
> Hi Resolution RGB monitor.  The former should be under $200 and the 
> latter around $20 if you can find it.  (The shipping on the monitor 
> may be more than the monitor.)

That's no problem at all. I have PowerPC machines up to kazoo. I have a 
Macintosh Server G3/300, Power Macintosh G3/300, Power Macintosh Blue 
and White G3/350, PowerBook 2400 w/G3 upgrade, PowerMac 8500, and a 
Titanium PowerBook G4. Most of these are already running NetBSD or will 
be shortly. Lots of monitors too and that's not including all of the 
mac68k stuff, i386 stuff, and a little bit of sparc too.

> People like Allen Briggs know loads more than I do about this, but for 
> booting it might work to just can the appropriate Open Firmware device 
> tree into ppcboot and hand it off to the macppc port. Probably not 
> that simple in practice since the relevant device drivers may not 
> *all* be in macppc and they may make OF calls during the setup > process.

Thank you for the suggestion. I have been talking to Allen Briggs today 
through email about the whole thing. He is very helpful. That's a 
possibility but I'm sure Allen Briggs would know more about it than I 
do. He seems fairly confident that he could get it at least booting in 
less than a week. It wouldn't be fully polished but it would be a 
start. I'm hoping some others are also interested in working on the 
project. Allen has said that he would prefer if somebody else jumped in 
rather than himself because he does not have a lot of time.

Thanks for the feedback. Keep up the good work.

Bryan