Subject: Some questions...

From: Alex deVries <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 18:34:01 -0400 (EDT)

What are the implications of us redistributing the header files from Irix?
In particular, there are some header files for newport graphics that are
needed.

Oliver, how's the fdisk port going?

- Alex

-- 
Alex deVries, puffin on LinuxNet.
http://www.engsoc.carleton.ca/~adevries/ .

---

From: [email-masked] (Ariel Faigon)
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 17:25:03 -0700 (PDT)

:
:
:What are the implications of us redistributing the header files from Irix?
:In particular, there are some header files for newport graphics that are
:needed.
:

My personal reasoning for "it is not really a problem"
stems from the following facts:

	1) If you have the Indy (hardware) you already have
	   the license for IRIX (for your own use)

	2) Unlike in earlier days where you had so buy a "developer's CD"
	   to get headers"   SGI is now including header files standard
	   with the system (since 6.2 at least).

	3) Newport graphics is ancient technology (about 6 years old)

Having said that, all these headers usually have this on top:
/**************************************************************************
 *                                                                        *
 *               Copyright (C) 1996 Silicon Graphics, Inc.                *
 *                                                                        *
 *  These coded instructions, statements, and computer programs  contain  *
 *  unpublished  proprietary  information of Silicon Graphics, Inc., and  *
 *  are protected by Federal copyright law.  They  may  not be disclosed  *
 *  to  third  parties  or copied or duplicated in any form, in whole or  *
 *  in part, without the prior written consent of Silicon Graphics, Inc.  *
 *                                                                        *
 **************************************************************************/

So clearly we should get permission from the "powers that be" and
someone needs to ask the legal people :-)   I just don't know
what entity can approve this.  If anyone knows and we can get
a brief "approved" from some director, it would be nice.

Any volunteers ?

-- 
Peace, Ariel

---

From: Peter Maydell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 06 Jun 1998 08:32:49 +0200

>	   the license for IRIX (for your own use)

Does this hold for earlier machines as well? I have a 4D/70GT with no
system software... 

While I'm here, I thought I'd look into the feasibility of porting
Linux to this machine. [In fact, I'm probably not going to have access
to the machine for long enough to work on it, but maybe somebody else
will. (the machine belongs to the Computer Preservation Society here in
Cambridge...)]

Anyway, points that spring to mind:
* the CPU is an R2000; I don't think any of the current ports are for
less than an R3000 -- does anybody know how different the R2000 is?

* without hardware documentation I suspect it will be impossible to get
anywhere. Every board seems to have a CPU on it :-> The ESDI and ethernet
boards both have 68000s, and the graphics board set has a 68020 complete
with debugging monitor you can access via a serial terminal, in addition
to all those custom chips...
Are SGI being helpful about providing documentation on the older hardware?

Peter Maydell

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From: Jeremy John Welling <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 6 Jun 1998 11:36:15 -0400 (EDT)

Um, on top of the reasons you've already sited, I don't think there's
enough of those behemoth's still in operational existence to make a port
worth while.  I'm no hardware expert, but other than the original os,
there's not much you can do for that old box.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 08:14:02 +0200

> less than an R3000 -- does anybody know how different the R2000 is?

The R3000 is basically an R2000 which has undergone an overhaul to make
higher clockrate possible.  With respect to software R2000 and R3000 are
100% compatible with the exception that the product ID register c0_prid
contains a different value.

For those of you who are not reading [email-masked], Harald yesterday
managed to bring his DECstation into userland booting from a ramdisk, so a
large fraction of the job has been done.

> Are SGI being helpful about providing documentation on the older hardware?

This is one point.  The other is as somebody else mentioned in this thread
that few people actually still have such a machine, the number of active
kernel hackers will be even lower.  Given that and that the machine is
unsupported since a long time, maybe SGI might even consider contributing
sources for such ancient systems as long as they're not poisoned with AT&T
(C) stuff ...

  Ralf

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From: [email-masked] (Steve Rikli)
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 17:17:11 -0700 (PDT)

> sources for such ancient systems as long as they're not poisoned with AT&T

This might be an opportune time to point out the "This Old SGI" website
again:

	http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/2258/4dfaq.html

I dunno how helpful the info therein will be wrt Linux porting, but from
a purely selfish point of view I'd love to see Linux running on the 4D
(especially MP boxes like 4D/440 et al) series & other R3K boxes (e.g.
classic Indigo) since I personally own a couple of them.  ;)

cheers,
sr.
-- 
|| Steve Rikli <[email-masked]> |||                                         ||
|| Systems Administrator    ||| How can something that is almost 3 MB   ||
|| SNS, EIS Infrastructure  ||| in size be called a "kernel"?           ||
|| Silicon Graphics, Inc.   |||                                         ||