Re: NetBSD on a PowerBook G4

[Taylor R Campbell <campbell%mumble.net@localhost>]

   Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 19:37:23 -0400
   From: Michael Lorenz <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost>

   We need:
   - - power management support in relevant PCI host bridge drivers  
   ( uninorth and ohare, maybe heathrow as well )
   - - many macppc-specific device drivers lack all power management  
   support. On the other hand, at least ADB is handled by the PMU anyway  
   and in newer PowerBooks there isn't that much proprietary hardware left
   - - code to tell the PMU to fall asleep ( should be easy )
   - - code to deal with uninorth's power control registers ( there are  
   two 32bit registers which control things like power to various  
   devices, PCI, firewire etc. clock and so on )
   - - code to re-initialize the graphics chip on wakeup. This may work  
   with radeonfb but radeonfb has trouble on some chip variants.

   Many machine-independent PCI device drivers already have power  
   management support. It works pretty well on quite a few x86 laptops.

I have been paying too little attention for the past couple of months
since this email, but I'm still interested in these.  However, I know
next to nothing about most of these subjects.  Would you care to
elaborate upon where one might start if one were to work on these
things, now that I've finally gotten around to eliminating the other
showstopper (wifi?