ralf@uni-koblenz.de wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 06, 1998 at 08:32:49AM +0200, Peter Maydell wrote:
>
> > Ariel Faigon wrote:
> > > 1) If you have the Indy (hardware) you already have
> > > the license for IRIX (for your own use)
> >
> > Does this hold for earlier machines as well? I have a 4D/70GT with no
> > system software...
> >
> > While I'm here, I thought I'd look into the feasibility of porting
> > Linux to this machine. [In fact, I'm probably not going to have access
> > to the machine for long enough to work on it, but maybe somebody else
> > will. (the machine belongs to the Computer Preservation Society here in
> > Cambridge...)]
> >
> > Anyway, points that spring to mind:
> > * the CPU is an R2000; I don't think any of the current ports are for
> > less than an R3000 -- does anybody know how different the R2000 is?
>
> The R3000 is basically an R2000 which has undergone an overhaul to make
> higher clockrate possible. With respect to software R2000 and R3000 are
> 100% compatible with the exception that the product ID register c0_prid
> contains a different value.
>
> For those of you who are not reading linux-mips@fnet.fr, Harald yesterday
> managed to bring his DECstation into userland booting from a ramdisk, so a
> large fraction of the job has been done.
>
> > * without hardware documentation I suspect it will be impossible to get
> > anywhere. Every board seems to have a CPU on it :-> The ESDI and ethernet
> > boards both have 68000s, and the graphics board set has a 68020 complete
> > with debugging monitor you can access via a serial terminal, in addition
> > to all those custom chips...
> > Are SGI being helpful about providing documentation on the older hardware?
>
> This is one point. The other is as somebody else mentioned in this thread
> that few people actually still have such a machine, the number of active
> kernel hackers will be even lower. Given that and that the machine is
> unsupported since a long time, maybe SGI might even consider contributing
> sources for such ancient systems as long as they're not poisoned with AT&T
> (C) stuff ...
This might be an opportune time to point out the "This Old SGI" website
again:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/2258/4dfaq.html
I dunno how helpful the info therein will be wrt Linux porting, but from
a purely selfish point of view I'd love to see Linux running on the 4D
(especially MP boxes like 4D/440 et al) series & other R3K boxes (e.g.
classic Indigo) since I personally own a couple of them. ;)
cheers,
sr.
--
|| Steve Rikli <sr@sgi.com> ||| ||
|| Systems Administrator ||| How can something that is almost 3 MB ||
|| SNS, EIS Infrastructure ||| in size be called a "kernel"? ||
|| Silicon Graphics, Inc. ||| ||
|