A recent message by Elf in the "old vs new" thread, mentioned in passing the notion of "writing a new operating system for SGI hardware", which I found intriguing. Now that would be an interesting project!
I've done a bit of kernel hacking on IBM PC compatibles, which is easy because the platform is documented to high heaven. But I wonder if there are resources out there documenting the boot process of SGI hardware, how to make the SGI firmware run custom code, and how to talk with the basic hardware necessary to get things going (maybe a text console or even just a serial port for starters).
I'm sure there are differences from SGI computer to SGI computer. I think I'd like to target the indy or the O2 for such a project.
So, is there any good source of info for such a project out there? Any pointers appreciated.
(I realize I could just study the linux/mips source code and try to figure it out like that, and it's good that option exists, but I don't enjoy reading other people's code very much, and I try to avoid it wherever possible).
I've done a bit of kernel hacking on IBM PC compatibles, which is easy because the platform is documented to high heaven. But I wonder if there are resources out there documenting the boot process of SGI hardware, how to make the SGI firmware run custom code, and how to talk with the basic hardware necessary to get things going (maybe a text console or even just a serial port for starters).
I'm sure there are differences from SGI computer to SGI computer. I think I'd like to target the indy or the O2 for such a project.
So, is there any good source of info for such a project out there? Any pointers appreciated.
(I realize I could just study the linux/mips source code and try to figure it out like that, and it's good that option exists, but I don't enjoy reading other people's code very much, and I try to avoid it wherever possible).