Re: Linux on a RS/6000 with PowerPC and MCA
On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Aaron Burt wrote:
> > Speaking from the perspective of "IBM help". What'cha need? Perhaps I
> > might be able to first find it and second get permission to send it your
> > way.
>
> Adam Fritzler appears to be the smart guy regarding the confluence of MCA
> and PPC. Though he's pretty heavily loaded with Token-Ring issues, IIRC.
I'm fairly loaded with graduating-high-school issues at this point :)
> I suspect technical (HW- and register-level) docs for any PowerPC MCA
> RS/6000 boxen would do it. But I don't know who should get it.
There are lots of people with boxes. The key is to find the people with
the knowledge, time, and the specific hardware for the docs.
> Someone with time, C skills and the appropriate hardware COULD raise their
> hand and describe their platform(s)...
I'm raising. I currently have a 7011, but I have yet to get it to work.
I'm suspecting hardware failure. Donations accepted :)
> It would seem like the best tack would be to go after the MCA PowerPC
> boxen with an MCA port and a bootloader. Once that's working one could
> then start playing with POWER's different MMU and instruction set.
> Someone said that the PowerPC compiler can generate POWER code.
Right. PPC MCA is going to be the first difficult step. We need docs on
the boot process at this point. From there, we'll need docs on everything
thats non-standard, including the MCA interface, etc. (The MCA part is
probably one of the easiest problems to solve in an MCA PPC port -- its
just the common difference between that group of machines and the rest of
the PPCs.)
> And I counted about 5 people with boxes expressing serious interest
> in running Linux.
I've cc'd this to the mailing list we set up a few months ago.
I'd be happy to accept any docs IBM wants to give, as I'm sure anyone else
would. What would be best would to have the docs in electronic format
with a free distribution policy. Printed docs with the same policy would
be adequate as well -- scanners are fairly prevelent these days.
We'd love to have IBM assistance here!
af
---
Adam Fritzler
{ mid@auk.cx, afritz@iname.com}
http://www.auk.cx/~mid/
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