Re: [9fans] MIPS Support in Release 4

Re: [9fans] MIPS Support in Release 4

[rob pike, esq.]

Geoff is right.  Despite repeated requests by a number of people,
SGI has never given us the right to distribute our kernel source
for their machines under an open source agreement.

-rob

Re: [9fans] MIPS Support in Release 4

[Jim Meier]

On Fri, 28 Jun 2002 08:04:36 -0600, rob pike, esq. wrote:

> Geoff is right.  Despite repeated requests by a number of people, SGI
> has never given us the right to distribute our kernel source for their
> machines under an open source agreement.
> 
> -rob
 
That's too bad. Is there any way to obtain a binary-only kernel? Perhaps
one from an older release?

-Jim

Re: [9fans] MIPS Support in Release 4

[Jim Meier]

On Fri, 28 Jun 2002 08:04:36 -0600, rob pike, esq. wrote:

> Geoff is right.  Despite repeated requests by a number of people, SGI
> has never given us the right to distribute our kernel source for their
> machines under an open source agreement.
> 
> -rob
 
That's too bad. Is there a binary-only kernel available? I assume it
would have to be purchased, if it is even available..

-Jim

Re: [9fans] MIPS Support in Release 4

[rob pike, esq.]

> That's too bad. Is there any way to obtain a binary-only kernel? Perhaps
> one from an older release?

The release terms would need to be negotiated, it probably wouldn't run
on your hardware, and since it would be from an ancient version of the
kernel - the only SGI machine we still have is a hulking Challenge - many
binaries wouldn't work properly. ls, for one.

I've spent too much time trying to get SGI to let us spring our kernel loose.
I'm not spending any more.

-rob

Re: [9fans] MIPS Support in Release 4

[Geoff Collyer]

SGIs are MIPS machines (except perhaps the earliest ones, but the 4Ds
are MIPS).  There were ports to one of the SGI Challenge machines and
I believe the Indy or Indigo.  I can't recall if these were ever
distributed, and kittens are destroying my office, so I'm not going to
spend the time to find out.  Anyway, 4e doesn't include any SGI ports
and SGI never made it easy to get the sort of information (e.g.,
physical memory map, MMU details) that you'd need to port to their
machines, and I think there was quite a bit of variation, though
probably not as much as across Sun's product line, where it seemed
that every new model had a new incompatible MMU.  For terminals, the
frame buffers seemed to all be different and incompatible.

[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