Hi Peter,
I am in the same boat as you essentially, only I am a little
worse off. I own 2 Indigo R3000's and would love to see a port of
Linux or NetBSD or something of that nature done for the machine, but
alas, I fear that if I don't start one on my architecture there may
never be a port to the R3000.
There is some hope for you. I believe someone on this list
told me a while back that a port is being developed by someone to the
R4000 Indigo, someone here might be able to shed some more light on
that for you as I have no idea who is doing that.
There is also the Plan 9 effort, which is an OS that is/was
being developed by AT&T that supports the R4000 and maybe even the
R3000. You may be able to get information about the architecture of
the Indigo from this code. I have been unsuccessful in this respect,
but, maybe you will have better luck than I. Here are some Plan 9
links to get you started:
http://www.vitanuova.com/plan9/
http://www.fywss.com/plan9/plan9faq.html
As far as getting information from SGI, I wouldn't bother
with that, as anyone else in here would agree. The chances of them
giving you any information are slim to none. The expense of having
someone at SGI pull documentation for the Indigo (if it even still
exists) is too high. So, architecture information and specifications
are very hard to come by.
I am thinking about *attempting* to start a port of some
linux distribution to the R3000, but I have to admit, the task seems
a bit daunting. On other platforms, this is difficult with the proper
documentation. You may also want to take a look at the Linux/MIPS
page and check out the Indy port, which is the only functional Linux
port to the SGI platform that I am aware of.
I hope that some of this information will help you out.
Remember to try the MIPS website also as there may be some useful
bits of data there that will shed some light for you.
Thanks,
Mike
Hi,.
I recently acquired a R4000 50MHz Indigo without an IRIX install nor CD
with it. No CD-Rom player either, however I did order one, network however
does seem to work. And as I am a linux fanatic and professional programmer
myself I would like to see whether I could help a bit with bringing linux to
this system.
As Indigo support isn't finished and I have nothing but a bare BIOS
to start with; and have no experience with the machine to begin with;
I have to ask for _help_ :)
Where do I start reading and tinkering to get linux; for as far as it's
sort of running; on my system ?
Are there any specs for the machine, especially for those parts that need
most urgent development and which parts are that ?
kind regards,
Peter Zijlstra
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