On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 4:46 AM, Cyril Plisko <cyril.plisko at mountall.com> wrote:
> [snip] > > Going with Apple is swapping one obsolete platform for another. > It doesn't matter how cheap you can pick the kit up from ebay _today_. > In some time in the future we will again find ourselves with something > that runs on quickly diminishing hardware and a need to pick something > else. > I'm confused. It seems like many are under the impression that this port will only be done for only one platform, and that we need to debate which platform makes the best business decision long term. To my mind, this "port" will have to be done many times. But the work that Brian, Guy, Tom (and others) have done has largely been to just get PPC working, period, no? I'm working under the assumption that as long as there are enough basic resources to develop on (including documentation or code to reverse-engineer), any platform is as good as the next because we'll /learn/. And the next hardware port will be easier because we'll have already have 1 platform under our belt. Personally, I'm just going to go ahead and get as far as I can get (which may not be much due to my lack of time and hardware experience at this level) with the PowerMac I already have. If I can get to a self hosting state, I'll try to tackle other platforms. Perhaps by that time the magic will happen and a sponsor will show up with more "relevant" hardware. Meanwhile, PowerMac/Linux/FreeBSD hackers everywhere will be enthused about a port of OpenSolaris. I'd rather be using the same platform as the rest of you, but I know what my ability is to purchase more hardware for this personal endeavor - $0. To me, what's perhaps equally as important as the platform choice is the knowledge/experience aspect. I'm going to make an effort to get involved in the PPC communities for Linux and FreeBSD and see if there are ways to leverage their knowledge and experience. I'm somewhat sceptical about the ongoing involvement from the current brain trust (the former Sun Labs folks). Are they still around? Will they continue to be involved? If they've moved on to other projects or companies, are they in the same boat as the rest of us -- needing a new platform and hardware to port on? It occurs to me too that even if I go with the Mac -- which at this point, I believe would be documented well enough because of the existence proofs in abundance -- how easy will it be to do low level bring up without things like JTAG/hardware debugging? Would another EFiKA run be more beneficial because of the additional debugging tools that would bring? This the answer to this last question is the only thing that'd sway me from using a PowerMac. I guess Cyril's speculation make sense. Until money shows up and the requirement for a viable and healthy and future-proof platform becomes a necessity, this will have to be a hacker effort/itch scratching. I'm tempted to suggest that SMI could just be hatching plans for a PPC port with IBM behind closed doors which would make all this moot, but that'd just be mean. Mark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/powerpc-discuss/attachments/20080318/d852f3f9/attachment.html>
