Re: Some planning issues.

Re: Some planning issues.

[Jason Eckhardt]

>
> Boot Loader
> -----------
>
> We need to figure out how to load a kerne image; I suspect borrowing from
> openbsd and mklinux will be great.
>
>

  I have knowledge of how this works from my time at HP. It is mildly
  complicated compared to other platforms. As far as I know, the document
  describing the process isn't available outside of HP but the mklinux
  guys obviously had access to it.
  I can get something going here if no one else volunteers. 

  Note that my machine is a C160 (64-bit PA8000 based). I think most of you
  have 700 series machines. I should be able to get one going that will work
  in w=0 (32-bit) mode so that it will also work with the 700 machines. But
  someone with a 700 will need to test it and possibly hack it.

>
> All of this is going to be terrifically difficult without someone with
> prior HPPA experience.  However, we do have OpenBSD and mklinux to model
> things after. And hopefully we'll have docs.
>

  These are good sources, but I hope we can get "real" docs from HP. There
  is tons of information about the PDC, IODC, boot process, and I/O 
  architecture that would be very useful -- and its a lot easier to read
  about than pick through code. I can give what I know/remember.

  Regards, Jason Eckhardt. 

Re: Some planning issues.

[Christopher Beard]

>   These are good sources, but I hope we can get "real" docs from HP. There
>   is tons of information about the PDC, IODC, boot process, and I/O 
>   architecture that would be very useful -- and its a lot easier to read
>   about than pick through code. I can give what I know/remember.
> 

It's looking and sounding very likely that we will have an official source
of "real" documentation from HP......

If we can come up with perhaps an initial wish list, that may be a good
approach to take. Perhaps those who have working knowledge of this
documentation or those working internally could suggest titles and
document numbers and we can then push to have cleared for public
consumption.

Obviously, there will be some documentation that we will definitely
require ahead of others, so prioritizing our requests will be important.
We will also have to look into an efficient means of distributing these
documents once we have them in our hands.

I'll likely know more by the end of the week.
 
- Chris

Re: Some planning issues.

[Steve Ball]

I dont know if this helps much, but hp has an online manual titled
"PA-RISC 1.1 Architecture and Instruction Set Reference Manual" that
describes how to use the bus and chip...

I have this downloaded if anyone needs it and cant find it readily.

At the current time, my department has 2 715/50's and 6 700-RX units, and
we would like to run linux on them.  I have pa-mklinux working on one of
the 715/50 using the stuff provided by the opengroup's effort.  It seems
to run extremly well.

If there is any help I can give, i'm more than willing to try stuff out :)

----------------------******-------------------
Steve Ball
NMT EE Department System and Network Admistrator
C/S 3392
Socorro, NM 87801
hamster@arctic.nmt.edu          http://www.ee.nmt.edu/~hamster
Work: (505) 835-5330 (Digital Lab)
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Home: (505) 835-6325 (South 335)
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The secret of flying is simple: Throw yourself at the ground and miss.
----------------------******-------------------

On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, Christopher Beard wrote:

> 
> >   These are good sources, but I hope we can get "real" docs from HP. There
> >   is tons of information about the PDC, IODC, boot process, and I/O 
> >   architecture that would be very useful -- and its a lot easier to read
> >   about than pick through code. I can give what I know/remember.
> > 
> 

Re: Some planning issues.

[Alex deVries]

On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, Steve Ball wrote:
> I dont know if this helps much, but hp has an online manual titled
> "PA-RISC 1.1 Architecture and Instruction Set Reference Manual" that
> describes how to use the bus and chip...

So people know, this document is available at:
http://www.hp.com/nsa/pa1.1/html/acd-1.html

(thanks to Zach Brown for that URL)

- Alex

-- 
Alex deVries <puffin@redhat.com>
Red Hat Contrib Net maintainer
Ottawa, Canada

Re: Some planning issues.

[Richard J. Rauenzahn]

Here's a good book:

	PA-RISC 2.0 ARCHITECTURE
	by Gerry Kane
	ISBN 0-13-182734-0
	Prentice Hall
	http://www.prenhall.com

Rich

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Re: Some planning issues.

[Lars Segerlund]

 Efficient means, net or CD ? possible ?

 / Lars Segerlund.

Re: Some planning issues.

[Lars Segerlund]

 Will a 9000/725 do ?

 / Lars Segerlund.

 I got plenty of spare drives, and mkLinux running to bootstrap.

Some planning issues.

[Alex deVries]

Alright.  Here are some very preliminary planning idea for HPPA.  It's
hard to tell exactly how this is going to go because we haven't even seen
architecture overviews yet.

I'm writing this mostly for the people who've never been through a linux
port before; I'm borrowing heavily from my SGI experience.

Build Environment
-----------------

Generally, the way to get started with the kernel is to cross compile.
We're at an advantage because there's some sort of native builder for
mklinux; asuming this works we may just build under mklinux until we have
modern cross compilers working for target hppa-linux.

I've got binutils cross compiler already, egcs has some issues.

Boot Loader
-----------

We need to figure out how to load a kerne image; I suspect borrowing from
openbsd and mklinux will be great.


Kernel
------

Alright.  This is the hard part. This is going to involve a lot of trial
and error, particularly up until the point where you can actually get some
output.

The order of what to build should be:
- stuff in arch/hppa, which is:
  - boot strapping code (head.S)
  - MMU handling
  - signal handling
  - interrupt handling, etc
  - talking on the local bus
- some sort of network driver so we can get to root nfs
  - ethernet device driver (drivers/net)

All of this is going to be terrifically difficult without someone with
prior HPPA experience.  However, we do have OpenBSD and mklinux to model
things after. And hopefully we'll have docs.

After this is the 'easy' kernel work:
- stuff in drivers/hp/:
  - graphics
  - SCSI controller
  - keyboard
  - other devices

Userland
--------
The mklinux tree is libc5 based, IIRC.  That means we're going to have to
fix glibc 2.x to support hppa-linux.  A slight pain, but not impossible.

After this, modern distributions should build cleanly.  I'm pretty keen on
building Red Hat for hppa, and that's not only because I work for them.
We'd encourage other distributions too, I think.

Undoubtedly there'll be packages which assume that if you have an HPPA,
you must be running HP-UX.


- Alex

-- 
Alex deVries <puffin@redhat.com>
Red Hat Contrib Net maintainer
Ottawa, Canada