Re: Port to R3000 Indigo

[Alan Hoyt <neuroinc@unidial.com>]

Ariel Faigon wrote:

> I believe this was referred to by Bill Earl in an earlier post.
> Clearly, this needs further explanation.
>
> Since the interfaces with SGI proprietary hardware were never meant
> to be public, the only documentation you can really rely on to be
> accurate and reliable is the (working) IRIX source code.  We would really
> like to avoid publishing material that's incomplete, outdated, and
> turns out to be more confusing than it is worth.
>
> Now, if it were entirely in my hands, I would have gladly published
> some source code.  The problem is much more complex than that.  The
> IRIX source code includes licensed code from many external commercial
> sources, AT&T SVR4, Sun, Xerox, etc. each surrounded by its own complex
> licensing terms, so the lawyers need to look into this lest SGI
> becomes liable by just making some "innocent goodwill" happen.
>
> I know it sounds lame, and I as much as anyone, hate this, but
> this is reality, and it isn't simple as it may appear to some.
> It requires a lot of legal (inspection and clearance) + engineering
> (sanitize and clean up code) time which I'm not sure we can afford
> on a global scale.
>
> The good news is that SGI is clearly putting much more emphasis
> these days on developing hardware that is much more standard
> and opening more and more source code (after legal has looked into
> it and approved it).  Everything we have been doing in the past
> year on the Linux front makes this clear that this is where we're
> going.  I would like to request a bit of patience and support...
> You are preaching to the choir here.
>
> --
> Peace, Ariel

One last question:

I have an old Indigo and Indigo 2 - I am very interested and very serious about
porting Linux to one of these systems.  However, without detailed hardware specs.
a very difficult job becomes much much harder.  Can you throw a dog a bone?  Are
there any hardware specs. (NOT source code) that you are willing and/or capable
of providing at this time to get the ball rolling- without further delays
perpetrated by your legal department?

Thanks

 - Alan Hoyt -