At 10:37 -0400 05/27/2002, Dan Stewart wrote: >Dual processors on unsupported machines will probably never happen, IMO. >It's certainly possible theoretically, but I suspect the amount of work >requred to make it happen is huge. Ryan says (said about a year ago, >actually) he was working on it in his spare time, but I wouldn't hold my >breath. > >You're much better off just getting a G4 upgrade card. I've actually got >dual 200 mhz 604e's here, but I don't use them anymore, since I got the >G4/450 card.
Actually, quite a lot of work has been done on this by members of the Darwin email list (one of Apple's lists, I believe). In fact Ryan has posted on the topic a number of times, though I don't remember what he said other than to express interest. One of the problems appears to be that in our older machines Open Firmware builds the device tree improperly for multiple processors. You can think of Open Firmware as a tiny Operating System. There are versions and revisions and our machines have one of the oldest clunkiest versions. Newer versions handle this much better. Alas, there is no way to update our Open Firmware as it lives in the ROM. Anyway, on our machines the primary CPU is put at the top of the device tree. In newer OF, there's apparently a CPU category and each CPU found is listed under that heading on the device tree. So they had to come up with modifications that would create entries for both CPUs and add the Open Firmwarey stuff (my knowledge just reached its limit) so that Darwin could actually hook up with and recognize the extra CPU. Jeff Walther -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
