[9fans] MIPS Support in Release 4

[9fans] MIPS Support in Release 4

[Jim Meier]

I'm sorry if this has all been covered before, I used google's archives
to search for MIPS references but didn't find what I was looking for. If
it's there, just point me at the right keywords.

I recently bought a used old "SGI 4D/340GTX Power Series Twin Tower" - at least,
that's what the seller told me. I can't find a reference to it anywhere
on the net. My intentions with it are to use it's four R3000 processors
(again, I'm just going by what I've been told, I don't know SGI hardware
at all) to play with plan9's forking and file system.

The Documents I've been able to find tell me that R3000 processors are
supported by the compiler, but that's a long way from knowing if it works
with a particular machine, and if so how to get it booting. The
installation instructions for Plan9 R4 talk only about PCs, and I
couldn't find MIPS boot images in the cd image I downloaded.

Will I have to install plan9 on a PC first, and cross compile a kernel? I
already have a DHCP/bootp server, so (as long as I can figure out the SGI
machine) getting it to the machine should be easy enough.

I know I've done more rambling than question asking, but will this work?
Are SGI MIPS machines, and mine in particular, supported? Will the
cross-compilation be nescessary? What other steps are needed?

Thanks, and sorry again if I'm asking FAQs
-Jim

[9fans] Re: MIPS Support in Release 4

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Jim Meier wrote:
> Will I have to install plan9 on a PC first, and cross compile a kernel?

I doubt that any recent version of Plan 9 will directly install
onto your SGI, and if not you'd be S.O.L., so plan to dedicate at
least a partition on one PC to Plan 9 while developing the SGI port.
You can add a disk to an existing PC or just get a cheap PC (Plan 9
is not very demanding) with supported video card etc.