FreeBSD/amd64 on machine without ACPI BIOS? ==> works

[Denis Fortin]

On 2011-12-09 10:10:18, Lev Serebryakov <lev at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
 > Soekris ("famous" developer of small x86-compatible appliance-like
 > hardware) released *net6501* some time ago, which is based on Atom (E6xx)
 > CPU. It seems, that 64-bit version of Linux could run on it without 
problems.
 > But FreeBSD/amd64 can not. It stops after kernel detect some devices
 > without any errors or panics.

Nicholas Esborn and I have been looking at this on soekris-tech
and found that if you enable the optional MPSPEC mptable support
in the kernel by adding "device mptable" to the GENERIC
configuration and rebuild a kernel, you get a FreeBSD 9.0-RC3
amd64 kernel that works fine on the Soekris net6501 in 64-bit
mode.

The GENERIC 32-bit i386 kernel finds the mptable and works fine
out of the box, without any changes or options.

I don't know why "device mptable" is optional, but enabling it
allows the net6501 to work with amd64.  I assume it's too late
to do something about this for 9.0-RELEASE?

Cheers,

Denis, fortin at acm.org