On Thu, 2005-11-17 at 14:10 -0800, Brad Boyer wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2005 at 02:44:34PM -0600, Eric Shattow wrote:
> > An unrelated / off topic question for you, is there still interest in
> > adapting EMILE to support ppc? I can send you hardware to test with if
> > needed.
>
> Wouldn't it be easier to just hack miboot to support a wider range of
> hardware? I have to admit that I haven't looked at booting on
> nubus-pmac since I don't have the hardware.
>
> Brad Boyer
> flar@...
>

Brad,

The miBoot licensing and "free as in freedom" alignment is in question.
I've used miBoot as a user on 6116cd apple mac hardware, and it is very
well done. You practically need an Apple OS to set it up from user's
point of view though, and for a developer it is not suited to F/OSS. I
mean that the developer of miBoot used Apple-proprietary software to
build it. This is not an acceptable solution for F/OSS as I understand
it. EMILE might be the base of legitimately GPL licensed code needed to
build a proper F/OSS bootloader for ppc nubus (and others) macintosh
systems.

I think the concept used in EMILE/m68k is identical to that which would
be used for an EMILE/ppc derivative. The hardware in each platform
contains a partial MacOS boot rom.

Function of miBoot is acheived by using Apple-provided toolkits which
facillitate development of a fake MacOS "System" file. This is read by
the partial MacOS boot rom as the real "System" file, then the execution
changes to run miBoot code, and that code is designed to trick the
partial MacOS boot rom into executing linux kernel code.

I might have the details wrong here, and this is as best I can remember.
My "mystic" 68k mac has taken priority over the pizza box 6116cd in
recent months :)

Eric

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