Re: SNI RM400

On Tuesday, November 12, 2002, at 01:56 AM, Toru Nishimura wrote:

>> A very quick look at Linux suggests that the RM200 is an ARC-style
>> machine.  I have no idea how different an RM400 is, but maybe these
>> can be shoe-horned into NetBSD/arc?
>
> Is it sure the Siemens has MIPEL?  I have such an impression that
> SINIX is a RISCos descendant, the MIPSEB.

SINIX on Siemens RM machines is definitely big endian (Siemens also
offered a - little endian, of course - Sinix version for x86-based 
machines
as well as the NS32k-based MX300). The big-endian RM-series firmware
looks quite similar to SGI-style firmware IIRC. At least older versions 
of
it could only boot ECOFF files.

You could flash RM200s and RM400s with little-endian ARC-compliant
firmware in order to boot NT. The early RM200 Linux ports required
little-endian operation.

I have a RM200 as well as two RM400s (the EISA variants, not the more 
recent
RMx00C PCI-based machines) and worked a bit on the Linux ports to these
machines, so I could lend a hand in porting NetBSD.

regards,
	Michael Engel	([email protected])