OF booting news

OF booting news

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

For those who haven't seen it yet, with Darwin 0.2, Apple release new
pieces of source code, including the secondary loader, with sources, a
working of control video driver, and more... That's interesting because
we should now be able to make a great secondary booter with OS choosing
capabilities. I don't have time to look into this now, but this could be
a good replacement for BootX in the future.

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Re: OF booting news

[Tom Rini]

On Sat, 15 May 1999, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:

> For those who haven't seen it yet, with Darwin 0.2, Apple release new
> pieces of source code, including the secondary loader, with sources, a
> working of control video driver, and more... That's interesting because
> we should now be able to make a great secondary booter with OS choosing
> capabilities. I don't have time to look into this now, but this could be
> a good replacement for BootX in the future.

It looks like most part of the MkL booter were canablized in this as well.
So it should be possible to do the following, with a little work:
On old (not New World) ROMs, choose between: MacOS, LinuxPPC, MkL (little
bit of work on their end?), possibly BeOS, *BSD, and and OSX.  On New
World, most of that is possible (some problem OF booting LPPC right now,
and No MacOS (w/o lots of work).)  All that's really missing from it right
now is some graphical part I think.  There's a routine to draw the OSX
logo tho. :)

--
Tom Rini (TR1265)
http://dobbstown.yeti.edu/


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Re: OF booting news

[Jerry Quinn]

Tom Rini wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 15 May 1999, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> 
> > For those who haven't seen it yet, with Darwin 0.2, Apple release new
> > pieces of source code, including the secondary loader, with sources, a
> > working of control video driver, and more... That's interesting because
> > we should now be able to make a great secondary booter with OS choosing
> > capabilities. I don't have time to look into this now, but this could be
> > a good replacement for BootX in the future.
> 
> It looks like most part of the MkL booter were canablized in this as well.
> So it should be possible to do the following, with a little work:
> On old (not New World) ROMs, choose between: MacOS, LinuxPPC, MkL (little
> bit of work on their end?), possibly BeOS, *BSD, and and OSX.  On New
> World, most of that is possible (some problem OF booting LPPC right now,
> and No MacOS (w/o lots of work).)  All that's really missing from it right
> now is some graphical part I think.  There's a routine to draw the OSX
> logo tho. :)

Umm, any news about Platinum drivers?  Otherwise, a revised loader still
wouldn't be very useful on 7200 class machines.


-- 
Jerry Quinn                             Tel: (514) 761-8737
jquinn@nortelnetworks.com               Fax: (514) 761-8505
Speech Recognition Research

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Re: OF booting news

[Tom Rini]

On Wed, 19 May 1999, Jerry Quinn wrote:

> Tom Rini wrote:
> > 
> > On Sat, 15 May 1999, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> > 
> > > For those who haven't seen it yet, with Darwin 0.2, Apple release new
> > > pieces of source code, including the secondary loader, with sources, a
> > > working of control video driver, and more... That's interesting because
> > > we should now be able to make a great secondary booter with OS choosing
> > > capabilities. I don't have time to look into this now, but this could be
> > > a good replacement for BootX in the future.
> > 
> > It looks like most part of the MkL booter were canablized in this as well.
> > So it should be possible to do the following, with a little work:
> > On old (not New World) ROMs, choose between: MacOS, LinuxPPC, MkL (little
> > bit of work on their end?), possibly BeOS, *BSD, and and OSX.  On New
> > World, most of that is possible (some problem OF booting LPPC right now,
> > and No MacOS (w/o lots of work).)  All that's really missing from it right
> > now is some graphical part I think.  There's a routine to draw the OSX
> > logo tho. :)
> 
> Umm, any news about Platinum drivers?  Otherwise, a revised loader still
> wouldn't be very useful on 7200 class machines.

There were many of patches in there.  I wasn't aware the 7200 OF was
broken.  The source is the boot part of darwin, in SecondaryLoader, iirc.
Go check it out. :)

--
Tom Rini (TR1265)
http://dobbstown.yeti.edu/


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Re: OF booting news

[Jerry Quinn]

Tom Rini wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 19 May 1999, Jerry Quinn wrote:
> 
> > Umm, any news about Platinum drivers?  Otherwise, a revised loader still
> > wouldn't be very useful on 7200 class machines.
> 
> There were many of patches in there.  I wasn't aware the 7200 OF was
> broken.  The source is the boot part of darwin, in SecondaryLoader, iirc.

I think the issue is that there isn't an OF driver at all for the
platinum controller.  With the old OF booting through quik, nothing
could display on the screen until linux took control, which was one
reason why BootX is a huge improvement (as is MkBooter for mklinux).

Unless I'm getting the issues wrong (always a possibility :-)

-- 
Jerry Quinn                             Tel: (514) 761-8737
jquinn@nortelnetworks.com               Fax: (514) 761-8505
Speech Recognition Research

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Re: OF booting news

[Remco Post]

On 19-May-99 Jerry Quinn wrote:
> 
> Tom Rini wrote:
>> 
>> On Wed, 19 May 1999, Jerry Quinn wrote:
>> 
>> > Umm, any news about Platinum drivers?  Otherwise, a revised loader still
>> > wouldn't be very useful on 7200 class machines.
>> 
>> There were many of patches in there.  I wasn't aware the 7200 OF was
>> broken.  The source is the boot part of darwin, in SecondaryLoader, iirc.
> 
> I think the issue is that there isn't an OF driver at all for the
> platinum controller.  With the old OF booting through quik, nothing
> could display on the screen until linux took control, which was one
> reason why BootX is a huge improvement (as is MkBooter for mklinux).
> 
BootX is a huge improvement if you like waiting for a machine to boot and have
an option. Quik is still my favourite since I never boot MacOS on my 7200.
Having to install my kernel on a MacOS partition was another thing I disliked
about BootX (that may have changed by now....)

> Unless I'm getting the issues wrong (always a possibility :-)
> 

> -- 
> Jerry Quinn


----------------------------------
E-Mail: Remco Post <R.Post@sara.nl>
Date: 20-May-99
Time: 10:29:10

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Re: OF booting news

[Jerry Quinn]

Remco Post wrote:
> 
> On 19-May-99 Jerry Quinn wrote:
> >
> > I think the issue is that there isn't an OF driver at all for the
> > platinum controller.  With the old OF booting through quik, nothing
> > could display on the screen until linux took control, which was one
> > reason why BootX is a huge improvement (as is MkBooter for mklinux).
> >
> BootX is a huge improvement if you like waiting for a machine to boot and have
> an option. Quik is still my favourite since I never boot MacOS on my 7200.
> Having to install my kernel on a MacOS partition was another thing I disliked
> about BootX (that may have changed by now....)

BootX is a huge improvement because it allows OS choice in a clean
manner. I don't like waiting for my system to boot any more than the
next person, although timeout on an OS chooser doesn't bother me.

I share the machine with my wife, who wants to use MacOS.  Also some
MacOS games.  So being able to switch is a requirement for me.  I'd love
to have a booter that could present an OS choice box (on a 7200-class
machine :-) that didn't have to partially boot into MacOS.  Hence my
original question about Platinum OF drivers.

Jerry

-- 
Jerry Quinn                             Tel: (514) 761-8737
jquinn@nortelnetworks.com               Fax: (514) 761-8505
Speech Recognition Research

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Re: OF booting news

[Martin Costabel]

Jerry Quinn wrote:
> 
> Remco Post wrote:

> > BootX is a huge improvement if you like waiting for a machine to boot and have
> > an option. Quik is still my favourite since I never boot MacOS on my 7200.

> BootX is a huge improvement because it allows OS choice in a clean
> manner. I don't like waiting for my system to boot any more than the
> next person, although timeout on an OS chooser doesn't bother me.

I am curious: Has anyone ever compared the actual booting times for OF
booting and BootX booting (I can't, because my 6400 doesn't OF boot
anymore). I suspect the difference is less than 10 seconds. On a total
booting time of more than 60 seconds, this is really minimal.

I just rebooted, and the total time of 110 seconds (from typing "reboot"
until the login prompt) was spent as follows:

35 sec: shutdown
23 sec: starting MacOS and BootX extension, hitting the button, waiting
for the  
        penguin to show up and the kernel messages to start scrolling by
52 sec: rest of linux boot procedure.

--
Martin

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Re: OF booting news

[Philipp Tomsich]

On Thu, 20 May 1999, Martin Costabel wrote:

> I am curious: Has anyone ever compared the actual booting times for OF
> booting and BootX booting (I can't, because my 6400 doesn't OF boot
> anymore). I suspect the difference is less than 10 seconds. On a total
> booting time of more than 60 seconds, this is really minimal.
> 
> I just rebooted, and the total time of 110 seconds (from typing "reboot"
> until the login prompt) was spent as follows:
> 
> 35 sec: shutdown
> 23 sec: starting MacOS and BootX extension, hitting the button, waiting
> for the  
>         penguin to show up and the kernel messages to start scrolling by
> 52 sec: rest of linux boot procedure.

I upgraded a PowerMac 8500 based PPC target system to YDL-1.0 and
compared the boot times last week. My findings make a rather strong
argument for OF booting: while BootX booting (using MacOS 8.6) takes about
30 secs, the kernel is loaded and started from OF in typically 3 seconds
(stopwatch timing).




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