From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Sun, 24 Jun 01 21:32:06 PDT From: msokolov@ivan.Harhan.ORG (Michael Sokolov) Message-Id: <0106250432.AA04374@ivan.Harhan.ORG> To: linuxppc-commit@ppcbk.mvista.com, linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org Subject: Re: patch for SBS K2: don't initialise the L2 cache Sender: owner-linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org List-Id: Matt Porter wrote: > The only firmware available to date for an SBS K2 is PMON. PMON does not > configure the L2 cache. > > [...] > > When a firmware release is made available that properly sets up the L2CR > then I'll be happy to remove the L2CR setup code, not before. Here is the situation. I personally dislike PMON (quite strongly), and from my personal conversations with Matt I've gathered that he shares my belief. (Matt, please correct me if I'm wrong.) Furthermore, I'm ready to venture a guess that any of the Linux/PPC maintainers who are Free Hackers (as opposed to representing companies with a stake in the matter), given a demo and description of PMON versus other possible firmware would very likely also find PMON inferior. However, so far it seems like (for reasons that are outside my realm of responsibility) SBS wants to stick with PMON for what it ships to customers. Here is what I propose to the Free Linux/PPC maintainers. Remember that the very purpose of the Free public tree is to serve the interests of the Free People not dominated by the interests of any particular company. Just like Red Hat or anybody else working on GCC cannot make changes to the public GCC tree only because their customers want the change and just like MontaVista or anybody else working on Linux cannot make changes to the public Linux tree only because their customers want the change, I similarly suggest that SBS's non- technically-justifiable need to ship PMON to customers instead of StarMON be kept out of the public Linux tree. I suggest that Free public Linux/PPC support booting on SBS boards only under StarMON and not under PMON, even if SBS has to ship PMON and an altered version of Linux that boots under it to its customers. This way customers who insist on getting PMON can get it directly from SBS without imposing it on the rest of the free world, and Free Hackers who want to go by technical considerations only and not management decisions can use Free StarMON and Free Linux from the net. If a board came with PMON, replacing it with StarMON takes one erase/program cycle of the flash, of which the flash manufacturer guarantees at least a million. -- Michael Sokolov 5791 VAN ALLEN WAY Software Engineer CARLSBAD CA 92008-7321 USA SBS Technologies, Inc. Phone: +1-760-438-6900 x2347 Communications Products or +1-888-SBS-COMM x2347 Fax: +1-760-438-6904 E-mail: msokolov@sbs.com or msokolov@ivan.Harhan.ORG ** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/