Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 07 May 2002 22:42:54 -0700
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        Wilko Bulte <wkb@freebie.xs4all.nl>
Cc:        David O'Brien <obrien@FreeBSD.ORG>, Mark Santcroos <marks@ripe.net>, freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: *bsd on srm-less alpha's
Message-ID:  <3CD8BADE.D7D0FC8C@mindspring.com>
References:  <20020507143448.GG321@laptop.6bone.nl> <20020507103639.B23330@dragon.nuxi.com> <20020507211046.D2422@freebie.xs4all.nl>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Wilko Bulte wrote:
> On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 10:36:39AM -0700, David O'Brien wrote:
> > On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 04:34:48PM +0200, Mark Santcroos wrote:
> > > My goal is to first get a kernel running on a modified milo and after that
> > > to create a selfhosted bsd loader.
> >
> > There has been some work on this -- see /sys/boot/arc/
> 
> But be prepared to have a lot of work to do yourself.

Particularly in the VM system.  With different microcode, you
get digfferent machine instructions.  FreeBSD relies on a
number of instructions which act a particular way because they
are implemented in the SRM that way.

In fact, FreeBSD relies on more microcode specific behaviour
than Linux (but less than OSF/DEC UNIX/TRU-64).  That's why
the fake SRM that the Linux folks at the University of Arizona,
Tucson built into LILO isn't good enough to run FreeBSD.

It's possible to write the VM code to deal with this, but it
is going to almost be a platform port (e.g. IMO, the differences
are enough that they are equivalent to those of the PC vs. the
NEC PC-98, or the IA64 vs. the Pentium).

-- Terry

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3CD8BADE.D7D0FC8C>