From owner-freebsd-alpha Tue Jan 19 07:31:54 1999 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id HAA26967 for freebsd-alpha-outgoing; Tue, 19 Jan 1999 07:31:54 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from callisto.fortean.com (callisto.fortean.com [209.42.229.241]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id HAA26947 for ; Tue, 19 Jan 1999 07:31:48 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from walter@fortean.com) Received: from localhost (walter@localhost) by callisto.fortean.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA20799; Tue, 19 Jan 1999 10:31:23 -0500 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: callisto.fortean.com: walter owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 10:31:22 -0500 (EST) From: "Bruce M. Walter" Reply-To: "Bruce M. Walter" To: Doug Rabson cc: "Justin T. Gibbs" , alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: AHC/WD driver status... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org First off, while I'm getting these messages directly in email and am a member of -alpha I *DON'T* get them via the list, although all other -lists are fine for me. Odd... JG> Getting the 2940 to work shouldn't be too hard. I'll take a crack at JG> it later this week. It should be just a matter of finishing off some JG> of the bus dma stuff in the driver and I've been meaning to do that JG> for some time. DR> I don't know if the firmware can support it though which would make it DR> useless as a boot device (it would work after boot though). What does DR> the firmware say when you type 'show config'? I know this sucker won't EVER boot from the ahc. I am however lucky enough to have it recognize the IDE drive from the SRM so I could install NetBSD-current. As far as it goes, I was considering working on a couple of the areas where I'm having probslems: Primarily, using Linux's PALcode/ahc enabled boot loader from ARC to start FreeBSD. It was mentioned as being a possibility, and since I have the need... The key of course would be having a recognized drive someplace where FreeBSD could live. I guess things will be easier when my QLogic card arrives. DR> It would be possible to hammer a pio-only port of wdc into the alpha DR> but I don't know when that can happen. It has to be moved to the DR> new-bus framework soon anyway for Garret's i386 isa renovation DR> project. We'll see. I had surmised as much. While I'm glad to see that's the thrust, I'd hate to see it be the only stone rolling. If you take a step back and look at what the CAM stuff did for 3.0, it's great. The problem for me (and alot of others) is that some fairly popular devices haven't been CAMified yet. (aic and amd, but I'm not pointing fingers ;) What I'm specifically getting at is my feeling that IDE support would let people take better advantage of their alpha machines to further the port and that even if it is analagous to the old SCSI layer vs. CAM it should be out there if it's not *too* much work. It would definitely help me contribute to the port if there was a way to hang cheap IDE drives on my alpha for development purposes. This is, of course, only a valid posit if Garrett's atapi work is fairly far from culmination. Not wanting to dish up work for others ;) I'm going to try to take a look at what would be involved in hammering some sort of IDE support in, even if it's destined to go away soon. I've got Linux and NetBSD on the box now and to be honest, between those two I'm ready to pull my hair out ;) Any pointers? - B ______________________ Bruce M. Walter, Principal NIXdesign Group Inc. 426 S. Dawson Street Raleigh NC 27601 USA 919.829.4901 Tel 919.829.4993 Fax http://www.nixdesign.com Visual communications | concept + code To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message