Re: AmigaOne X5000

Hello,

I am sorry about the delay. I need to get better at responding to  
emails.

On Mar 14, 2017, at 11:21 AM, Michael wrote:

> Hello,
>
> On Tue, 14 Mar 2017 11:58:30 +0100
> Frank Wille <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Al Zick wrote:
>>
>>> I think I may have found someone who would be willing to donate a
>>> motherboard to a developer who can port NetBSD to it.
>>
>> I have been offered boards in the past to port NetBSD onto it  
>> (also a Sam440
>> or 460, IIRC), but I never accept that, because it would always cause
>> pressure on me to work on it. I want to work on a port for fun,  
>> and stop
>> whenever I feel like it.
>
> Nobody expects full time work or a 100% success rate. If you can't  
> work
> on it anymore, hand it over to someone who can. The alternative is not
> getting things supported.
> Also, if you get a new toy, you'll want to mess with it anyway ;)
> At least that's my experience from accepting a few hardware donations.
> I got them all working, eventually. In some cases it took a while,
> since spare time isn't guaranteed and real life happens.

No one wants to put you under any pressure Frank, but many of us  
would love to see NetBSD running on the X5000.



>>>> So I am most interested in the new PPC notebook from ACube
>>>> Systems, [...]
>>>
>>> I would really like to get one of these too. My G3 powerbook with
>>> the G4 (550 MHz) upgrade is really showing its age.
>>
>> Same with my PowerBook G3 Pismo (which I always used for travelling).
>
> I've never been able to find a reasonably priced G4 upgrade for  
> mine...

I don't know if he has them any more, but the company where I bought  
mine is now called Wedge (formerly Wegner Media).


>>> Which kernel would
>>> you suggest? Is there any hope of it booting, but only using one  
>>> core?
>>
>> You can always try. First you have to determine which kind of  
>> firmware the
>> system is running to boot kernels. Maybe some version of UBoot?
>
> That would make things relatively easy - build uboot image, try to  
> make
> it talk to a serial port, proceed from there.

Yes, it does use uboot.

FreeBSD has support for it. However, without video and you need to  
netboot. What is interesting is that to create a uBoot image, you use  
the NetBSD mkubootimage.

Is it possible to port their code?


>> For a start, I would try an evbppc kernel supporting e500, like  
>> P2020 or
>> RB800. But I cannot give you a good advice here, because I never used
>> evbppc myself. I'm more used to sandpoint, ofppc and macppc...
>
> If it's anything like evbmips it's a kitchen sink of all sorts of
> oddball configs that are too obscure to have their own directory in
> arch/
>
> have fun
> Michael

I always have fun!

-Al