[Info-vax] X86 first boot? - A Really Stupid Question

[Dave Froble]

On 3/31/2019 10:30 PM, Michael Moroney wrote:
> Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>
>> On 2019-03-29, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> So, if many of the device drivers have been re-written by VSI, perhaps
>>> they could make them available.  Whether they would do so is another
>>> question.
>
>> Something more than the existing LRDRIVER would be nice. :-)
>
>>>   Whether they could or would make documentation available so
>>> third parties could write drivers might be a good question.
>>>
>
>> That's actually a rather good question.
>
>> When people write drivers for Itanium VMS at the moment, what information
>> sources do they use ?
>
>> Is the Writing OpenVMS Alpha Device Drivers in C book still the starting
>> point for Itanium ?
>
> The generic stuff is valid, but the hardware-specific stuff isn't, if a HW driver.
>
> I wrote a sort of template disk driver a couple years ago using that book, my
> knowledge, the example DQDRIVER.C and LRDRIVER, with the idea that perhaps it
> could be in SYS$EXAMPLES one day. I avoided existing sources for that reason.
>
> By template I mean it has all the generic disk-specific stuff like FDTs and one can
> add a few hardware-specific routines and be good to go. I tested it by making it a
> memory disk (not the same memory disk that will be used for X86 boot) and then used
> the memory disk for testing for the >2TB disk project (by faking lots of stuff out)
> before I got some real terabytes.  I even made a frankenstein driver by welding it
> to DUDRIVER (MSCP served driver) and it sort of worked. Now too busy for such stuff.
>

Send a copy to Simon.  Maybe it will keep him busy for a while.

:-)

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
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