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NetBSD Now Supports Dual Power PC Processors

Posted by timothy on from the shiny-boxes dept.

djcdplaya writes: "DaemonNews is reporting that the good guys over at NetBSD have gotten dual PowerPC processors working on dual-G4 Apples. The NetBSD mailing can be found here."

4 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Glad you asked by 'The+'.$L3mm1ng · · Score: 2, Informative
    Which is totally irrelevant if you read The FAQ:
    Operating systems we can usually work out uptimes for are:

    BSD/OS
    FreeBSD [but not the default configuration in versions 3 to 4.3]
    HP-UX [recent versions]
    IRIX
    Linux 2.1 kernel and later, except on Alpha processor based systems
    MacOSX
    NetBSD/OpenBSD [recent versions]
    Solaris 2.6 and later
    Windows 2000
    Windows .NET
    Windows XP
    Operating systems that do not provide uptime information include;

    AIX
    AS/400
    Compaq Tru64
    DG/UX
    MacOS
    NetWare
    NT3/Windows 95
    NT4/Windows 98
    OS/2
    OS/390
    SCO UNIX
    Sony NEWS-OS
    SunOS 4
    VM

    Additionally HP-UX, Linux, Solaris and recent releases of FreeBSD cycle back to zero after 497 days, exactly as if the machine had been rebooted at that precise point. Thus it is not possible to see a HP-UX, Linux or Solaris system with an uptime measurement above 497 days.
  2. Re:What for? by hubertf · · Score: 4, Informative

    Um, maybe not all PPC hardware is made by Apple?
    Look at the list of NetBSD ports that use a PPC:

    amigappc bebox macppc mvmeppc ofppc pmppc prep sandpoint walnut

    Of these, only 1 runs OSX.
    All of them run NetBSD though.

    - Hubert

  3. Re:NetBSD in OS X by LizardKing · · Score: 3, Informative

    I thought the point of this was so that the NetBSD portion of OS X's Darwin would finally be capable of utilizing dual CPUs

    Mac OS X uses portions of FreeBSD (user land bits mostly), but is built on top of the Mach microkernel. Mach began life as the BSD Unix kernel, but was extensively rewritten as an academic attempt at a working microkernel. While on his extended hiatus from Apple, Steve Jobs founded Next, who used this microkernel version of BSD in the NextStep operating system.

    Mac OS X is arguably NextStep given a bit of a makeover, hence the continued interest in GNUstep as a free version of OpenStep (and now the newer Apple API's). OpenStep was the user land API's from the NextStep operating system, packaged up to run on many other systems.

    The Mach kernel was adapted for multiple processors a long time ago, but I don't think the support was completed until Apple released OS X. So basically, NetBSD SMP support is something independent from Mac OS X's.

  4. Re:BSD? Nope... by The+Axe · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's a Mach microkernel with a FreeBSD kernel modified to run as a daemon. There is also a BSD-like layer (filesystem, some APIs, etc.). 70% of the userspace tools are from NetBSD, and I wouldn't doubt that they have some security code right out of OpenBSD.