* Re: sound, power button, volume buttons [not found] ` <19980729090902.D1989@uni-koblenz.de> @ 1998-07-29 15:40 ` William J. Earl 1998-07-29 16:50 ` ralf 0 siblings, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread From: William J. Earl @ 1998-07-29 15:40 UTC (permalink / raw To: ralf; +Cc: 4819, linux ralf@uni-koblenz.de writes: ... > You won't find any Indy hardware / firmware programming interfaces online. > Myself and a few of other developers have received paper copies in exchange > against the promise to not pass them on to other people. Maybe if the > electronic versions still exist (?) SGI would agree to spread these > documents - I expect more people to be interested in that documentation > in the future as the number of installation grows. ... So far, I have not found any of the electronic copies; Indy was done before the software people persuaded the hardware people to be religious about source control. :-) I can generally answer specific questions. Also, I can arrange to send a copy of the documentation to people who want to actively work on the project. (The informal limited distribution agreement was the basis on which the management agreed to let us release the documentation.) People have asked about documentation for other products. In general, I don't know where to find documentation for any of the SGI R3000-based systems. I do have incomplete documentation for some of the MIPS systems. SGI will probably be reluctant to release Challenge, Origin, or Octane documentation anytime soon, although that might change if we persuade the management to embrace linux officially (which might happen if the linux commercial server business on other platforms continues to expand rapidly). I also have not found much documentation for Indigo R4000, although it is fairly similar to Indy and Indigo2. Indigo2 is very close to Indy, although XZ and better graphics differ from the base XL/Newport graphics on Indy and some low-end Indigo2 systems; Indigo2 and Indy run the same IRIX kernel binary. O2 documentation is quite good, and the electronic versions are readily available, but I do not have approval to release that documentation at present; that might change if we agree to facilitate early linix ports to our next generation workstations, and will likely change once O2 goes out of production. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: sound, power button, volume buttons 1998-07-29 15:40 ` sound, power button, volume buttons William J. Earl @ 1998-07-29 16:50 ` ralf 1998-07-29 17:31 ` Richard Ingram ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: ralf @ 1998-07-29 16:50 UTC (permalink / raw To: William J. Earl; +Cc: 4819, linux On Wed, Jul 29, 1998 at 08:40:10AM -0700, William J. Earl wrote: > I can generally answer specific questions. Also, I can arrange to send > a copy of the documentation to people who want to actively work on the > project. (The informal limited distribution agreement was the basis on which > the management agreed to let us release the documentation.) > > People have asked about documentation for other products. In general, > I don't know where to find documentation for any of the SGI R3000-based systems. Do you think a ``Call for dusty Paper'' CfdP (TM) on the Usenet in groups like comp.sys.mips or comp.sys.sgi.* might make sense? I bet there are still people out there, maybe former SGI employees in the meantime which have helpful data around. > I do have incomplete documentation for some of the MIPS systems. I'm currently doing some brain surgery on some OEM machine which identifies itself as RS3230 and is running RISC/os 4.50 :-) > SGI will > probably be reluctant to release Challenge, Origin, or Octane documentation > anytime soon, although that might change if we persuade the management to > embrace linux officially (which might happen if the linux commercial server > business on other platforms continues to expand rapidly). I also have > not found much documentation for Indigo R4000, although it is fairly > similar to Indy and Indigo2. Indigo2 is very close to Indy, although > XZ and better graphics differ from the base XL/Newport graphics on Indy > and some low-end Indigo2 systems; Indigo2 and Indy run the same IRIX kernel > binary. O2 documentation is quite good, and the electronic versions are > readily available, but I do not have approval to release that documentation > at present; that might change if we agree to facilitate early linix ports > to our next generation workstations, and will likely change once O2 goes > out of production. As I already wrote to Richard Masoner - it's not uncommon that people write GPL software while being under NDA. The company reviews the code when it is finished and gives it's ok to publish it but the documentation (whatever it consists of - paper, code, electronic files, drawings ...) will stay undisclosed. In many cases this is a way to keep both sides happy. Since you mentioned the various graphic subsystems above - do you think the implementation of a ARC firmware text only based console might be sensible? I've got several requests for Linux from people who have a XZ graphic which we don't support yet - and there is quite a number of graphic options for SGI's out there so this might be somewhat helpful. Ralf ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: sound, power button, volume buttons 1998-07-29 16:50 ` ralf @ 1998-07-29 17:31 ` Richard Ingram 1998-07-29 18:19 ` William J. Earl 1998-07-29 22:04 ` Alistair Lambie 2 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Richard Ingram @ 1998-07-29 17:31 UTC (permalink / raw To: ralf; +Cc: linux On Jul 29, 6:50pm, ralf@uni-koblenz.de wrote: > Do you think a ``Call for dusty Paper'' CfdP (TM) on the Usenet in groups > like comp.sys.mips or comp.sys.sgi.* might make sense? I bet there are > still people out there, maybe former SGI employees in the meantime which > have helpful data around. > > > I do have incomplete documentation for some of the MIPS systems. > > I'm currently doing some brain surgery on some OEM machine which identifies > itself as RS3230 and is running RISC/os 4.50 :-) Some bits of documentation are out on the WWW for MIPS R4000 boxes, but not very technical - stuff like the 680MB CD-Rom users guide and ARC PROM commands guide. I downloaded them from the Internet Technical Documentation Archive. I also have some docs for the RC3x30 series - I'll mail the titles tommorrow (if I remember to dig them out!), I was going to make them available to the ITDA. Richard. -- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: sound, power button, volume buttons 1998-07-29 16:50 ` ralf 1998-07-29 17:31 ` Richard Ingram @ 1998-07-29 18:19 ` William J. Earl 1998-07-29 22:04 ` Alistair Lambie 2 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: William J. Earl @ 1998-07-29 18:19 UTC (permalink / raw To: ralf; +Cc: William J. Earl, 4819, linux ralf@uni-koblenz.de writes: > On Wed, Jul 29, 1998 at 08:40:10AM -0700, William J. Earl wrote: > > > I can generally answer specific questions. Also, I can arrange to send > > a copy of the documentation to people who want to actively work on the > > project. (The informal limited distribution agreement was the basis on which > > the management agreed to let us release the documentation.) > > > > People have asked about documentation for other products. In general, > > I don't know where to find documentation for any of the SGI R3000-based systems. > > Do you think a ``Call for dusty Paper'' CfdP (TM) on the Usenet in groups > like comp.sys.mips or comp.sys.sgi.* might make sense? I bet there are > still people out there, maybe former SGI employees in the meantime which > have helpful data around. I doubt it would. The behavior of the machines are documented in the IRIX source (for IRIX 5.3 and earlier; support for R3000 systems was dropped after that), but we cannot in general release that due to our license agreements with the providers of some of that source. With management approval, we might be able to release certain parts which show the hardware interfaces and which only have an SGI copyright. I will see what is possible. > > I do have incomplete documentation for some of the MIPS systems. > > I'm currently doing some brain surgery on some OEM machine which identifies > itself as RS3230 and is running RISC/os 4.50 :-) I don't have much on that one, other than the RISC/os source, although I did work on the RS3230. The Magnum and Millenium 4000 systems are ARCS machines, with many PC-compatible parts, and I have more information about them, but I gather that linux already runs on them. ... > As I already wrote to Richard Masoner - it's not uncommon that people > write GPL software while being under NDA. The company reviews the code > when it is finished and gives it's ok to publish it but the documentation > (whatever it consists of - paper, code, electronic files, drawings ...) > will stay undisclosed. In many cases this is a way to keep both sides > happy. I will offer that option to the management; that might make it easier to make the documentation (especially the relevant SGI-copyright-only IRIX source) available. > Since you mentioned the various graphic subsystems above - do you think > the implementation of a ARC firmware text only based console might be > sensible? I've got several requests for Linux from people who have a > XZ graphic which we don't support yet - and there is quite a number of > graphic options for SGI's out there so this might be somewhat helpful. Yes, I think one could use the same firmware interface as the PROM. I believe that it is even possible to do X that way, with limited performance. I am not familiar with the details of the PROM firmware interface, but I will check it out when I have a bit more time. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: sound, power button, volume buttons 1998-07-29 16:50 ` ralf 1998-07-29 17:31 ` Richard Ingram 1998-07-29 18:19 ` William J. Earl @ 1998-07-29 22:04 ` Alistair Lambie 1998-07-29 22:37 ` William J. Earl 1998-07-29 23:41 ` ralf 2 siblings, 2 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Alistair Lambie @ 1998-07-29 22:04 UTC (permalink / raw To: linux ralf@uni-koblenz.de wrote: > > On Wed, Jul 29, 1998 at 08:40:10AM -0700, William J. Earl wrote: > > > > I do have incomplete documentation for some of the MIPS systems. > > I'm currently doing some brain surgery on some OEM machine which identifies > itself as RS3230 and is running RISC/os 4.50 :-) > Just in case some people don't know it (although I'd guess most people do!) MIPS shipped the source of most of the driver code with RISC/os. Doesn't help with the memory subsystem and the like of course. Every machine shipped with an OS license, so even if you didn't get a copy of the OS with your machine you are entitled to it...getting a copy may be the difficult bit :-) Alistair ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: sound, power button, volume buttons 1998-07-29 22:04 ` Alistair Lambie @ 1998-07-29 22:37 ` William J. Earl 1998-07-29 23:41 ` ralf 1 sibling, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: William J. Earl @ 1998-07-29 22:37 UTC (permalink / raw To: Alistair Lambie; +Cc: linux Alistair Lambie writes: ... > Just in case some people don't know it (although I'd guess most people > do!) MIPS shipped the source of most of the driver code with RISC/os. Yes, we sometimes had to lean on vendors to be able to ship the driver source, if it was based on code supplied by the vendor. SGI did not have the same view; MIPS was more OEM-oriented. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: sound, power button, volume buttons 1998-07-29 22:04 ` Alistair Lambie 1998-07-29 22:37 ` William J. Earl @ 1998-07-29 23:41 ` ralf 1 sibling, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: ralf @ 1998-07-29 23:41 UTC (permalink / raw To: Alistair Lambie, linux On Wed, Jul 29, 1998 at 03:04:11PM -0700, Alistair Lambie wrote: > Just in case some people don't know it (although I'd guess most people > do!) MIPS shipped the source of most of the driver code with RISC/os. > Doesn't help with the memory subsystem and the like of course. > > Every machine shipped with an OS license, so even if you didn't get a > copy of the OS with your machine you are entitled to it...getting a copy > may be the difficult bit :-) The problem is probably more like with a license for what version did the machine ship? Several desperated people have already asked me for copies of RISC/os and since I didn't want to get into that trap I never gave somebody a copy. (Or: Free Software is so much more convenient than warez :-) Ralf ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1998-07-29 23:43 UTC | newest]
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[not found] ` <19980729090902.D1989@uni-koblenz.de>
1998-07-29 15:40 ` sound, power button, volume buttons William J. Earl
1998-07-29 16:50 ` ralf
1998-07-29 17:31 ` Richard Ingram
1998-07-29 18:19 ` William J. Earl
1998-07-29 22:04 ` Alistair Lambie
1998-07-29 22:37 ` William J. Earl
1998-07-29 23:41 ` ralf
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