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Re: Darwin & the briQ (and other PPC computers)

Andre,
I don't think any non-Apple PPC machines are currently supported. The steps needed to add support are straight forward.

1) Booting:
Apple's BootX should not require many changes to run on system with non-Apple Open Firmware. These machines should be pretty easy on which to boot the kernel and load drivers. Non OF based systems are going to be a challenge.

2) Kenrel:
As long as the booter successfully loaded the kernel and drivers, there should be no need to change the kernel at all. The only hardware assumptions the kernel makes are: physical memory is contiguous, the frame buffer, if present, is linear and found by the booter, and the processor type is 603x, 604x, G3 or G4. Supporting processor would require kernel changes. Usually minimal changes.

2) Drivers:
Depending on the architecture of the hardware, more or less drivers will be required. PCI based systems may be able to leverage existing drivers. Here are some of the kinds of drivers that will need to be written:
IOPlatformExpert subclass (IODTPlatformExpert would probably work on Open Firmware machines).
A Host Bridge driver. The AppleGracklePCI driver might just work on MPC106 / MPC107 based systems.
South Bridge driver. Might be able to use on from Darwin on x86 project.
Video Driver. You are pretty much on your own here... Only really needed to support mode changes.


This is no small amount work, but there are lots of examples between the many Apple systems Darwin supports.

Josh


At 8:49 AM -0400 7/21/01, Andre John Mas wrote:
Hi,

Many of you probably read slashdot and saw the article on the briQ. Although
the computer is designed to run Yellow Dog Linux, I was wondering whether
the Darwin project would be ready to support non-Apple PPC based computers?
Does Darwin support IBM RS/6000 machines?

Andre

BTW the link is:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/21/1229227&mode=thread&threshold=
1

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 >Darwin & the briQ (and other PPC computers) (From: Andre John Mas <email@hidden>)



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