From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jan 14 10:24:46 1999 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA11964 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Thu, 14 Jan 1999 10:24:46 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from bsd-daemon.net (bsd-daemon.net [209.90.150.171]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA11940 for ; Thu, 14 Jan 1999 10:24:43 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from pjp@bsd-daemon.net) Received: from localhost (pjp@localhost) by bsd-daemon.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id NAA12912; Thu, 14 Jan 1999 13:24:10 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 13:24:10 -0500 (EST) From: Peter Philipp To: Scott Zhang cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: can freebsd run on top of power pc??? In-Reply-To: <369E3205.3F8408EA@iprg.nokia.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, 14 Jan 1999, Scott Zhang wrote: > Since FreeBSD is design for Intel platform only, we are a kind of stuck > with > Intel processor. I am wondering if it is possible to modify our existing > operation system(FreeBSD based) to make it run on Motorola Power PC > based system. If the answer is yes, what is the main work to be done. > How much effort it may take(say, how many months it takes for an very > skilled sr. engineer to work on it, roughly) Anything is possible and achievable if there is enough will. It is hard to say how many months it may take for 1 single person. Usually people team up to try to conquer a project to this scale. There is some effort to port FreeBSD to alpha and sparc hardware. IIRC those projects have been pretty long lasted, so you can assume that the task is not easy. But there is some help you might get from FreeBSD's cousin NetBSD who apparently have a half working PowerPC port. URL: http://nandra.iri.co.jp/NetBSD/macppc.html > I know these kind of questions are not easy to answer, but any feedback > from you will be very helpful for us to make a strategic decision. > > Let me restate my question again: > Q1. Is it possible to modify FreeBSD to make it run on top of Motorola > Power PC > Q2. If the answer to Q1 is positive. How much effort it takes. What is > the main area need to be modified. A1. If there is a will there is a way. A2. This is hard to answer. A lot of effort sounds reasonable. :) Hope that helps, Peter Philipp (PP2441) Daemonic Networks "In theory, theory is the same as practice, but not in practice" - ??? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message