From owner-freebsd-ia64@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Nov 30 16:26:00 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-ia64@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-ia64@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3377A16A41F for ; Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:26:00 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from b.j.casavant@ieee.org) Received: from yeppers.tdkt.org (skyline.tdkt.org [209.98.211.67]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5F3B043D45 for ; Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:25:58 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from b.j.casavant@ieee.org) Received: from chenjesu.americas.sgi.com (cfcafwp.sgi.com [192.48.179.6]) (authenticated bits=0) by yeppers.tdkt.org (8.12.11/8.12.11/erikj-OpenBSD) with ESMTP id jAUGPrL3000333; Wed, 30 Nov 2005 10:25:57 -0600 (CST) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 10:25:48 -0600 (CST) From: Brent Casavant X-X-Sender: bcasavan@chenjesu.americas.sgi.com To: Christian Hildner In-Reply-To: <438D56FB.90703@hob.de> Message-ID: <20051130101506.X10471@chenjesu.americas.sgi.com> References: <438D56FB.90703@hob.de> Organization: "Angeltread Software Organization" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: freebsd-ia64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSD on SGI machines X-BeenThere: freebsd-ia64@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Brent Casavant List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to the IA-64 List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:26:00 -0000 On Wed, 30 Nov 2005, Christian Hildner wrote: > has anyone ever tested freebsd on SGI Itanium machines? Not that I'm aware of. Also, the Altix machines have a very different system architecture, such that I can pretty much guarantee that FreeBSD IA64 won't work as-is -- it's really not even worth trying. I'm not sure what SGI's stance would be on releasing the necessary documentation to make BSD work. Several years ago I managed to get a VP to agree to release some information for the Indigo R4000 machines so that the NetBSD folks could use it -- but I think he agreed mostly because the machine was beyond even hardware spares support at that point. That said, that effort predated any real public Linux involvement by SGI, so maybe the outlook on hardware specs has changed. Your best bet, if you wanted to start adding support, might be divining hardware programming information from Linux kernel source (though of course not directly using their code). Brent -- Brent Casavant Dance like everybody should be watching. www.angeltread.org KD5EMB, EN34lv