From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun May 31 23:37:45 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id XAA10926 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Sun, 31 May 1998 23:37:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from nlsystems.com (nlsys.demon.co.uk [158.152.125.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA10916 for ; Sun, 31 May 1998 23:37:41 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dfr@nlsystems.com) Received: from herring.nlsystems.com (herring.nlsystems.com [10.0.0.2]) by nlsystems.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with SMTP id HAA29932; Mon, 1 Jun 1998 07:38:11 +0100 (BST) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1998 07:38:11 +0100 (BST) From: Doug Rabson To: Curt Sampson 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, Curt Sampson wrote: > 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. Don't worry, I am fully aware of the PALcode problem. I think it will be a far easier problem to deal with the bootstrap installing PALcode than for it to have a complete set of device drivers. There is plenty of PALcode source in milo. -- Doug Rabson Mail: dfr@nlsystems.com Nonlinear Systems Ltd. Phone: +44 181 951 1891 Fax: +44 181 381 1039 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message