Re: [9fans] missing compilers?

[Geoff Collyer <geoff@collyer.net>]

The powerpc compiler is there but no binary is supplied, so you need
to compile qc, qa and ql yourself.

I have inferno running on OS X.  It's still got some quirks and seems
to work better on 10.2 than 10.1.

A Plan 9 port needs at least a driver for the relevant Ethernet
controller (Apple's GMAC is built in to the Power Mac, as I recall).
For pre-VGA console access, it appears that one needs to use Open
FirmWare's console get and put routines since recent Macs don't seem
to have an accessible serial port.  Keyboard and mouse are normally
USB, which sounds like a pain.  It looks like there is a z8530 DUART
connected to a modem chipset, but the only external connector is a
phone jack.  I'm not sure which interrupt controller and MMU are used,
but all this information should be available in the Darwin or OpenBSD
sources.  The supplied VGA is usually ATI or Nvidia.  Disks and
CD-ROMS are normally IDE.

On the other hand, the Power Macs at least have several PCI slots, so
one could perhaps get an initial port running quickly by inserting
cards that already work on the PC, for example Intel i82557 Ethernet
or Mylex SCSI.  One can substitute Wavelan PCMCIA cards for Airport
cards.

The Open FirmWare boot loader can load AIX XCOFF binaries, which it
appears ql can generate.  As far as I know, qc doesn't exploit Altivec
instructions, so you probably won't see much advantage with a G4 as
compared to a G3.  3rd edition contains an mpc port and 4th edition
contains an mtx port.  One of them is probably a reasonable base to
start from, depending mainly on MMU and interrupt controller.