Debian MIPS on an SGI Indigo ?

[Christoph Viethen <cv@kawo2.rwth-aachen.de>]

Hello everybody,

I've got an R4000-based SGI Indigo and I'm wondering about how
to get Linux to run on it. Somewhere I read that the Indigo is
so far unsupported, and indeed, upon trying to boot the
kernel that I found at

ftp://ftp.rfc822.org/pub/local/debian-mips/kernel/
kernel-image-2.4.3-ip22-r4k.tgz

I got the dreaded message
"Yeee, could not determine architecture type <SGI-IP20>".

I took a look into the kernel source tree and found
that message being generated in "arch/mips/arc/identify.c"
when the architecture type isn't found in the "mach_table".

Now, what are the differences between the supported IP22
and the unsupported IP20 architecture? Are they particularly
great, or rather minor? Sorry, I don't know too much about
the internal workings of MIPS-based machines, and sorry again
if this tends to be a FAQ. I checked the archives of this
list but didn't find too much info regarding this particular
question.

In any case, obviously, I'd love to get Linux to run on my
machine, so any hints as to how to get on are appreciated.
(Actually, I was somewhat tempted to just change
arch/mips/arc/identify.c and add "IP20" to the table (copying
the rest of the line from the IP22 entry), just to see what
happens if I pretend that it doesn't really matter whether
the box has an IP20 or IP22 architecture. But then, I guess,
if it were that easy to get Linux to run on an Indigo, somebody
else would have done that already, right? :-))

Best regards,

  Christoph

-- 
 cv@kawo2.rwth-aachen.de