Subject: well it is about time...

From: "David S. Miller" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 05:19:46 -0700

This port is going like a funeral procession, I apologize.

Ok, quick report:

1) Interrupts work, with a little more coding it will handle the
   setup and registering of all interrupts and handlers on the
   INDY for whatever driver requests them.

2) Timers work, I am using the r4k counter/compare register timer
   mechanism because of the bug in the i8254 Intel timer chips
   on certain INDY's.  The calibration of the compare offsets
   needs some work but the working framework is there and needs
   a little tweaking, basically my algorithm is:

	a) setup i8254 counter 0 and counter 2 such that the period
	   of counter 0 is the desired HZ value
	b) poll counter 0 waiting for a value of 1
	c) quickly set CP0_COUNTER to zero
	d) poll counter 0 for value of 1
	e) quickly read CP0_COUNTER value

   This seems to approximate the value I want in it's current form
   pretty well.  I have to add some fuzz factors into it and possibly
   write the calibration code in assembly to get the accuracy I
   want/need.

3) The kernel boots decently far.  It init's all of memory management,
   sets up the buffer cache, sets up the inode table, inits the
   networking stack, prints the linux banner and is about to fork
   off the init kernel thread.

At this point my task list looks like:

1) Clean up and finish all the krufty code I wrote tonight ;-)

2) Write console/keyboard/mouse/serial drivers as these will need to
   be done anyways.

3) Do some verification on what works at that point.

4) Look into getting kgdb working.

5) Write ethernet/scsi drivers.

6) (fingers crossed) shell prompt... we hope...

As far as I'm concerned I am severely behind schedule.  I will try to
get the pace going more quickly soon, I promise.  Sorry.  God, I'm
so slow, two weeks to get the thing to half boot, sheesh!

Later,
David S. Miller
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (William J. Earl)
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 09:59:47 -0700

> This port is going like a funeral procession, I apologize.

      Not at all--nice work.  Considering some of the messy stuff
you have to deal with, it is going quite well.

..
 >    write the calibration code in assembly to get the accuracy I

      When it is time to do R4000 support, I can show you how to work
around the R4000 count/compare bug.  (This does not apply to other processors,
such as the R4600, R5000, or R10000.)