LinuxPPC and Force CompactPCI cards

LinuxPPC and Force CompactPCI cards

[Corey Minyard]

Is anyone working on or interested in Linux of the for CompactPCI
cards with the 750 processor?  Just curious...

-- 
Corey Minyard                   Internet:  minyard@acm.org
  Work: minyard@nortelnetworks.com  UUCP:  minyard@wf-rch.cirr.com

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Re: LinuxPPC and Force CompactPCI cards

[Christian Zankel]

Hello Corey,

> 
> Is anyone working on or interested in Linux of the for CompactPCI
> cards with the 750 processor?  Just curious...
> 

Actually, I have a 750 VME board here I want to start working on it as
soon as I can find some time for it. (Probably in a week, when I have
finished my exams).

I don't see much difficulties porting linux to the board as it mostly
uses standard components. And the main work seems to be already done
(Thanks to everyone working on the ppc-port! You did a great job!). 
Perhaps it might take more effort to write an own booter, like the
'milo' on alpha architectures, to replace the Powerboot/vxWorks-booter.

However, what concerns me more is the structure of the ppc-arch
directory. 
Perhaps I'm missing here something, but adding a new platform to the
ppc-arch means changing almost every common file (in ppc/kernel) and
adding more #ifdef's and if(architecture==FRC750) to them. I think,
these files are getting more and more unreadable. Besides, a lot of
platform specific files are also located in the ppc/kernel directory
(pmac_xxx.c, apus_xxx.c, etc.). So, adding new platforms means adding
new files to the common ppc/kernel directory. 
I don't see this as a problem if there should only be support for the
mainstream ppc platforms (like mac, perhaps chrp, prep). But I'm not
sure it's worth it blowing up the ppc/kernel directory and files only to
support another and probably less common used platform (like e.g. Force
750) (?).

So, I hoped, that the ppc-arch directory get changed to be more like the
m68k-arch structure. 
Here, each platform has its own directory. Most system functions with a
platform-specific implementation are variables of function pointers.
These variables are initialized by a platform dependend config routine
(e.g. config_mvme16x(...), config_amiga(...), etc.).
So, adding a new platform 'just' means to add a new directory and make
some minor changes to the rest of the files.

As I stated above, I hadn't had much time recently, so there might be
changes in this direction already on the way. Though it might be
unacceptable to make these changes in the 2.2 kernel.

I might be completely on the wrong way, so I'd really appreciate any
comments, if the arch/ppc should be and will be restructured or if less
common used platforms should be left out of the mainstream kernel, etc.


Thanks,
Christian



-- 
Christian Zankel       <zankel@mailserv.rz.fh-muenchen.de>

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Re: LinuxPPC and Force CompactPCI cards

[Gabriel Paubert]

On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Christian Zankel wrote:

> 
> Hello Corey,
> 
> > 
> > Is anyone working on or interested in Linux of the for CompactPCI
> > cards with the 750 processor?  Just curious...
> > 
> 
> Actually, I have a 750 VME board here I want to start working on it as
> soon as I can find some time for it. (Probably in a week, when I have
> finished my exams).
> 
> I don't see much difficulties porting linux to the board as it mostly
> uses standard components. And the main work seems to be already done
> (Thanks to everyone working on the ppc-port! You did a great job!). 
> Perhaps it might take more effort to write an own booter, like the
> 'milo' on alpha architectures, to replace the Powerboot/vxWorks-booter.

It depends on what the board provides, some residual data, an OF like
device tree or nothing (worst case since interrupt routing may be the
biggest problem)... But if it uses a Motorola bridge (MPC106) as it seems
the port will be quite easy, you only have to know whether it
boots in PreP mode or in CHRP mode to know the basic mapping of the
system (to know how to access PCI config space...). 

> I might be completely on the wrong way, so I'd really appreciate any
> comments, if the arch/ppc should be and will be restructured or if less
> common used platforms should be left out of the mainstream kernel, etc.

Restructuring efforts have been announced and some patches are floating
around.

	Gabriel.


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Re: LinuxPPC and Force CompactPCI cards

[Frank McPherson]

I'm interested, though I don't have any CompactPCI cards at the moment.  

Corey Minyard wrote:
> 
> Is anyone working on or interested in Linux of the for CompactPCI
> cards with the 750 processor?  Just curious...


-- 
Frank H. McPherson IV
The MITRE Corporation

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