[SPARCbook] OS for Sparcbook S3

[Michael Schwarz]

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I have Debian working beautifully on a Sparcbook S3.  I had no removable media 
drives (no CD-ROM, no floppy), so I did a BOOTP install from an image 
downloaded onto a Lintel box.  I used dhcpd to serve up the boot image to the 
MAC address of the S3's built-in ethernet.

The only problem I have (presently) is no GUI.  The S3GX uses a Weitek P9100 
video chip.  The Linux kernel has a framebuffer driver for that.  If you have 
the older S3 (non GX), then you have a Weitek P9000.  No framebuffer driver.  
I hacked the P9100 framebuffer driver to where the console text mode is 
working, giving me a fast text mode console (without that hack the console is 
like a 9600 baud display terminal -- painfully slow by today's standards).  
I'm happy to share a patch file of my change if anyone wants it.  Use at your 
own risk!

I've had no luck locating clear, official documentation of the P9000 and its 
differences from the P9100.  I very much want to get the GUI working on my 
S3.  There is a P9000 driver for the old XFree86 3.x.x version.  I should be 
able to reverse-engineer the framebuffer driver from that, but XFree is huge 
and it will take a lot of work.  I have a day job and I'm writing a book on 
Java programming AND I'm finishing my basement!  It is a bit difficult for me 
to put much time in on that project right now.

I will say that if anyone on this list knows someone who can provide detailed 
programming specs on the P9000, please pass the contact or info along to me.  
The problem is the P9000 was covered by an NDA.  I wouldn't ask anyone to 
violate an NDA that they had signed.  Weitek got bought some time ago by 
Rockwell (I think) and I have had no luck in finding any corporation that has 
this information!  The P9000 is quite dead by now, and while I seriously 
doubt there is any intellectual property worth protecting in it, my guess is 
the lawyers did their work well and it is to be kept from good use for the 
next 100 years or so.  I hope I'm wrong.  (The existence of an XFree86 driver 
suggests that I am wrong -- I hope so.)

So, there it is.  I *do* hope to write a P9000 framebuffer kernel driver, but 
time and information are the resources I lack.

- -- 
Michael Schwarz
http://www.multitool.net
mschwarz at multitool.net
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