Re: PPC subarches
Hi,
Jens Schmalzing wrote:
Is the AmigaONE a subarch, or it's own flavor?
Please remind me, what processor does the thing have and how do you boot it?
IBM 750CXe, or replaceable CPU module with one of the following CPUs:
IBM 750FX, MPC7451, MPC7455, will use other CPUs of this family down the
track i.e IBM 750XX, MPC744/5X
Two methods of booting:
The firmware is "U-Boot", it was designed to be used on embedded boards,
and uses a primitive booting method by default. You get the Linux kernel
image, create a special "UBoot image" (using "mkimage" tool - it adds a
few bytes of metadata), and then you can boot it either via TFTP, floppy
disk, or hard disk or El-Torito CDROM. By floppy/hard disk, I mean that
you need to "dd" the kernel image to the media. It is similar to a PreP.
The new and better method is via a special boot loader. This boot loader
is much more advanced, and is more akin to LILO etc. It was created to
boot AmigaOS4, but works with Linux too. To use this boot loader, you
place a U-Boot kernel image in /boot of a particular partition, a config
file (a1boot.conf) in /boot as well, and the boot loader will present a
boot menu on startup, load your chosen kernel off the file system, and
boot it. The only caveat is that boot loader only works with RDB prepped
disks. RDB is the partition scheme used by Amigas. The boot loader is
installed in a special reserved section of the RDB. Installation/removal
of this boot loader can be achieved in Linux using a patched
"amiga-fdisk" program, source code available from
amigaone-linux.sourceforge.net's CVS repository.
Regards,
Ross..
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