Re: Linux, MIPS R3000, Palm PC, Possible?
>From imp@harmony.village.org Sat Apr 17 13:14:18 1999
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 20:01:34 -0600
From: Warner Losh <imp@harmony.village.org>
Reply-To: linux-mips@fnet.fr
To: linux-mips@fnet.fr
Subject: Re: Maciene to be added
Resent-Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 04:05:24 +0200 (MET DST)
Resent-From: linux-mips@fnet.fr
[[ The following is good FAQ material, and I'm writing it with that in
mind ]]
In message <37103150.54232524@earthlink.net> Nickey Harper writes:
: i dont knwo if it is posible, but coulkd, _maybe_, it be possible to
: port the mips / Linux to a Phillips Velo(MIPS R4000 based PDA)...
: i know it is rom based, bot romimages could be made and flashed in...
: This is just a curiosity. i would appriecite it if you ould get back to
No. Rom images could not be FLASHED in. All of these devices, to the
best of my knowledge, have mask programmable roms, meaning that they
are burned at the factory and you don't get to ever change them. All
the machines i've seen do have ROM sockets, and I suppose there is a
standard for them. However, I've not been able to located said
standard, nor can I find EEPROM or FLASH that will fit into the space
allowed in my NEC MobilePro 450.
The Phillips Velo is based on a R39xx chipset. There are docs
available from Phillips, but no work has been done yet on porting to
this platform, at least from the Lunix kernel perspective. The kernel
needs to be enhanced to understand the subtle differences for these
low end MIPS processors. Not a huge job, but one no one has done
yet. Also, many of the CE class processors have lots of builtin
devices that will need drivers written for them.
There are also a boatload of devices based on the Vr41xx series of
chips: Vr4101, Vr4102, Vr4111 and Vr4121. Some of these are available
only in Japan, and many more are yet to ship. Web searches can find
some of them. Their names seem to keep changing, so I'm not going to
include them here. Of the released products that use Vr41xx, I know
of the following: All NEC WinCE products, Cassio's Casseopeia E line
(eg E-10), All of Everex's palmtops, and at least one model from
Compaq.
I have an incomplete port of gcc to mips-hpc-wince which I found on
the net and cleaned up. This will be needed to build a boot program.
However, I have no time to actively work on this port, so it has
languished for the past few months.
There are some people in Japan that have a boot program written, but
I'm not allowed to say anything more than that.
There is also a NetBSD port underway, by these same Japanese hackers,
that is in the early stages. It is also incomplete, but shows
promise.
Neither of these things are generally available yet, so don't write me
asking for where to find them. I cannot redistribute what I have.
Warner
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