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Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 22:00:20 +0200 (CEST)
From: Wojciech Puchar <wojtek@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl>
To: Frank Steinborn <steinex@nognu.de>
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FreeBSD on Cobalt RaQ 4
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> As i figured out, there is a ROM on it with a mini-Linux, that will
> look for an ext2/ext3 filesystem and for an /vmlinux.bz2 on /boot.
> Then it boots from there. This is really strange and seems to rule out
> FreeBSD completely.

Looks like you'll have to rewrite /boot/loader sources to

1) access disk with it's "minilinux" interface, or directly by hardware
2) to look like vmlinux image. If it's ELF - should not be a problem, if 
not - look how linux kernel makefile convert ELF to this format and do the 
same.

This ROM code may do some assumption where to load image in memory. If so 
- you have to link if to the same address.


Not easy way i think but not that difficult if you can write C programs.

>
> However, I can't believe that noone on earth hadn't FreeBSD running
> on it :-)
>
> Any hint would be appreciated. As an alternative, i could live with
> OpenBSD/NetBSD too.

i would even prefer linux than those ;)