Subject: Re: Port to Sun 386i
To: Zach Lowry <zach@zachlowry.net>
From: David Brownlee <abs@netbsd.org>
List: port-i386
Date: 06/02/2003 18:18:04
On Mon, 2 Jun 2003, Zach Lowry wrote:

> I am soon to recieve a Sun 386i, which I notice has not been ported
> to yet. Since for the past little bit I've been acquainting myself
> with my Sun 3/60 and 3/80s, I feel comfortable saying that I intend
> to port NetBSD to this unique machine.
>
	Excellent news - do you know if its a 150 or 250 (the 250 had
	had max 16M rather than 8M and had IIRC an extra cache)

> I'm looking for advice, however, since I've bever done this sort of
> thing before. Would it be best to start with the i386 port, remove
> all devices except those explicitly available in the 386i and then
> merge drivers for Framebuffers and the like from the sun3 port? From
> what I understand, the normal color and B&W framebuffers on the 386i
> correspond to the cg3 and bw2, but additionally there exists a cg5
> card and a VGA card for DOS emulation under SunOS.

	That would make sense - probably start with either using
	the PROM console or serial console to minimise the amount
	of driver writing to getting something booting.

> I'm also aware that there existed memory add-ons in the form of ISA
> cards, could anyone clarify on these boards, and would it be possible
> to support them?

	I don't remember any ISA memory boards, but it _should_ be
	possible to support standard ISA boards, possible DMA
	considerations notwithstanding :)


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