IBM POWER6 and FreeBSD

[Dmitriy Demidov]

Hi list!

I got one IBM Power 550 system to play with =)
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/550/index.html

First of all, I make a try to start FreeBSD-CURRENT snapshot installation, 
but - without success. System (SMS) do not recognizes FreeBSD-ppc nstallation 
media as bootable. The same with 7.1-RELEASE... I can start Linux SLES 10 
installation on this machine - so looks like DVD-ROM is not a problem here.

I take a look at http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ppc.html but do not found 
information about IBM POWER architecture support, so may be my idea to boot 
FreeBSD on this system is toooo crazy? :)

At this moment system is not partitioned - it do not have PowerVM 
virtualization enabled. 

So, I would like to ask - is it possible to start FreeBSD here or not? May be 
NetBSD will works on this POWER6 system? 

It is not critical for me - I'm just playing with this system while I have 
physical access - it is not intendet to be production.

Some info from Linux:

---

Rescue:/proc # cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
cpu             : POWER6 (raw), altivec supported
clock           : 4204.000000MHz
revision        : 3.2 (pvr 003e 0302)

processor       : 1
cpu             : POWER6 (raw), altivec supported
clock           : 4204.000000MHz
revision        : 3.2 (pvr 003e 0302)

processor       : 2
cpu             : POWER6 (raw), altivec supported
clock           : 4204.000000MHz
revision        : 3.2 (pvr 003e 0302)

processor       : 3
cpu             : POWER6 (raw), altivec supported
clock           : 4204.000000MHz
revision        : 3.2 (pvr 003e 0302)

timebase        : 512000000
machine         : CHRP IBM,8204-E8A

---

Rescue:~ # free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          7544        142       7402          0         15         89
-/+ buffers/cache:         37       7506
Swap:            0          0          0

---

Rescue:/proc # cat /proc/ppc64/lparcfg
lparcfg 1.7
serial_number=
system_type=IBM,8204-E8A
partition_id=1
R4=0xc8
R5=0x0
R6=0x8001ffff
R7=0x1000000000002
BoundThrds=1
CapInc=100
DisWheRotPer=5120000
MinEntCap=100
MinEntCapPerVP=100
MinMem=128
MinProcs=1
partition_max_entitled_capacity=200
system_potential_processors=2
DesEntCap=200
DesMem=7680
DesProcs=2
DesVarCapWt=0
DedDonMode=0

partition_entitled_capacity=200
group=32769
system_active_processors=2
unallocated_capacity_weight=0
capacity_weight=0
capped=1
unallocated_capacity=0
purr=1975715373512
partition_active_processors=2
partition_potential_processors=2
shared_processor_mode=0

---