Darwin on Crusoe?

MacOS Rumors is running a blurb that Apple is exploring porting Darwin to other processors (including Transmeta's Crusoe processor) due to frustration with availability of high speed Motorola G4 processors. An interesting though, a Mac without a Motorola chip... Of course, it's just a rumor at this point... (update: I've got it confirmed from "anonymous sources" that this is true)

Comments

Re:correction on Open Firmware

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Firmware isn't unique to Apple. It's actually an IEEE standard for boot firmware. (The "Open" in its name really does mean something.) From what I remember, it's a standard created by Apple and Sun, evolved from Sun's earlier firmware (called OpenBoot). It's actually pretty cool. It has a Forth interpreter built in.

On Macintoshes, you can access it by holding down Command-Option-O-F while booting. On Suns, it's Stop-A. I believe someone actually wrote a Forth version of Breakout that could run on Apple's OF implementation. Pretty neat trick for a boot monitor, imho.

Some PCI devices even have Forth driver code in their ROMs.

MacOS Rumors: Not Very Credible

[MoNickels]

I don't know if the porting story is true, but Mac OS Rumors has a spotty record. Many of its leads often seem to be lifted from elsewhere, the rumor reliability is poor, and usually so late as to be useless, besides which its articles are so filled with bogus predictions using words such as "likely", "possibly", "predicted", and longs chains of if-then scenarios as to completely obliterate any authoritative source that might have passed a true lead on in the first place.

You will be issued one grain of salt apiece.