Efika OF problems

[Nathan Whitehorn]

Matt Sealey wrote:
> There are two problems with OF calls in FreeBSD; one is that FreeBSD 
> has no
> support for a "real mode" Open Firmware - Apple's runs in "virtual mode"
> which means it has all kinds of MMU stuff set up.
>
> Solaris had the same problem and Sun fixed it by implementing a slim 
> "VOF"
> on top of our real OF, which implemented the virtual mode stuff.
>
> There is very, very little point in addressing this issue in firmware and
> implementing virtual addressing inside firmware, as OF client calls are
> stupidly slow. What you need to do is get it up and running and get 
> all the
> OF stuff *well* out of the way *well* before any MMU stuff is set up by
> the OS itself.
>
> NetBSD manages it somehow, I don't know how. You could have a chat with
> Frank Wille.. (see the port-ofppc at netbsd.org list)
We badly need a solution to this problem. I think the VOF route might 
not be a bad one for machines with hard-to-use firmwares -- we support 
runtime-switchable Open Firmware interfaces already, and we need support 
for Linux FDTs as well.
-Nathan