RE: Dropping firewire support from boot loader

Warner Losh <imp_at_bsdimp.com> wrote on
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2022 20:01:41 UTC :

> I'd like to drop firewire support from the boot loader. It's not been used
> in quite some time, as far as I can tell. Nor have I (or anybody else)
> tested it in forever.
> 
> Is anybody still using it? Does anybody know if it works? Any objections to
> removing it from FreeBSD 14?

I would suggest that old PowerMac's might be the most
likely usage context.

I no longer have a PowerPC context of any kind. I mostly
booted from SATA SSD's back when I had access to working
PowerMacs. I've not been able to remember if I'd tried
FireWire based booting of FreeBSD or what the status was
if/when I did.

I did use the cross machine FireWire means of looking
into boot crashes, as it could report some console
output even after the display quit updating for some
problems I had. (I never had a serial console context
on any of the old PowerMacs.) I do not remember much
detail about this use.

I'm not sure if I can submit to freebsd-ppc any more but
I'll try for this reply. If it does not show up, you may
need to send your own message there if you want a message
about the issue there.

===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com