From owner-freebsd-alpha Fri Oct 9 14:31:29 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA24950 for freebsd-alpha-outgoing; Fri, 9 Oct 1998 14:31:29 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from rover.village.org (rover.village.org [204.144.255.49]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id OAA24932 for ; Fri, 9 Oct 1998 14:31:22 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from imp@village.org) Received: from harmony [10.0.0.6] by rover.village.org with esmtp (Exim 1.71 #1) id 0zRk7p-0005nI-00; Fri, 9 Oct 1998 15:31:01 -0600 Received: from harmony.village.org (localhost.village.org [127.0.0.1]) by harmony.village.org (8.9.1/8.8.3) with ESMTP id PAA02786; Fri, 9 Oct 1998 15:30:37 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <199810092130.PAA02786@harmony.village.org> To: tls@rek.tjls.com Subject: Re: interesting quote from http://cnls.lanl.gov/avalon/FAQ.html#A1end Cc: alpha@FreeBSD.ORG In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 09 Oct 1998 15:18:39 EDT." <19981009151839.A6704@panix.com> References: <19981009151839.A6704@panix.com> <199810080452.WAA11026@harmony.village.org> Date: Fri, 09 Oct 1998 15:30:36 -0600 From: Warner Losh Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org In message <19981009151839.A6704@panix.com> Thor Lancelot Simon writes: : Being able to write a boot loader is *not* the issue. *YES* it is an issue. That's what we are talking about at the time. If you can't load a kernel into memory, then you can't boot anything. The PALcode issue is another issue which will need to be addresses as well. : This is pretty much equivalent to replacing the system BIOS in order to : boot and run on an x86 machine, except that it's much worse since the PALcode : provides pseudo-instructions which are used while the kernel's up and : running. There are two parts here. One is that the BIOS loads files from the disk differently, and we need to be able to deal with that. The PAL code is an orthognal issue that also needs to be dealt with. We need to load it (after getting from somewhere) and also recode our kernel to use that PALcode rather tan the OSF/1 PAL code that we use when the SRM console is used. : From a cursory examination of the EBSDK license, it's also not entirely : clear to me that redistributing the PALcode the way MILO does is 100% : kosher, but hey, IANAL. The files in milo/linload appear to be redistributable, at least according to the copyrights that are in them. I assume that since folks that wrote linload and milo work for Digital, that what they distribute is kosher. Warner To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message