From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun May 31 20:38:28 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id UAA19145 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Sun, 31 May 1998 20:38:28 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from ascetic.portal.ca (ascetic.portal.ca [206.87.139.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA19129 for ; Sun, 31 May 1998 20:38:21 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cjs@portal.ca) Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by ascetic.portal.ca (8.8.8/8.8.5) with SMTP id UAA03183; Sun, 31 May 1998 20:37:32 -0700 (PDT) X-Authentication-Warning: ascetic.portal.ca: cjs owned process doing -bs Date: Sun, 31 May 1998 20:37:32 -0700 (PDT) From: Curt Sampson To: Doug Rabson cc: Mike Smith , hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: AlphaBIOS documentation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sun, 31 May 1998, Doug Rabson wrote: > I have spent a *long* time reading Linux and Milo source code and I really > want to avoid putting hardware drivers in the bootloader. There's a lot more than hardware drivers in that particular bootloader. It also includes a complete set of PALcode. (PAL stands for `Privileged Architecture Library,' and is used to implement some very low-level, machine dependent functions, such as memory and TLB management.) This, of course, is different even from machine to machine with the same CPU, and thus the bootloader for the AXPpci33 is not the same as the bootloader for the Multia, despite the fact that they both use the same CPU and the are exactly the same machine type (that is, use exactly the same kernel code) under NetBSD. cjs Curt Sampson cjs@portal.ca Info at http://www.portal.ca/ Internet Portal Services, Inc. Through infinite mist, software reverberates Vancouver, BC (604) 257-9400 In code possess'd of invisible folly. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message