Re: FreeBSD on Intel Macs?

On 1/12/06, John Baldwin <jhb_at_freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> On Thursday 12 January 2006 09:09 am, Doug Rabson wrote:
> > On 11 Jan 2006, at 22:05, David Leimbach wrote:
> > > On 1/11/06, Julian Elischer <julian_at_elischer.org> wrote:
> > >> alan bryan wrote:
> > >>> I read that the new Intel (x86) Macs use EFI rather
> > >>> than the traditional PC Bios to boot up.  I'm
> > >>> interested in using one of these to multiboot OS X and
> > >>> FreeBSD and am wondering if it is yet known to work or
> > >>> not.  Do any changes need to be made to FreeBSD or
> > >>> should it work out of the box? Thanks for any insight
> > >>> and I know that it may be impossible to fully answer
> > >>> until people get their hands on the hardware but I
> > >>> just wanted to start thinking about the possibilities.
> > >>
> > >> well if they can boot Darwin I'm sure they can be hacked to boot
> > >> FreeBSD.
> > >> It would probabty require a different bootloader binary.
> > >
> > > I don't see what booting Darwin has to do with booting FreeBSD.
> > >
> > > However, since FreeBSD boots on IA64 using the FreeBSD bootloader
> > > for IA64,
> > > I *hope* it won't be much work to port whatever changes that
> > > requires to
> > > IA32.
> >
> > When I wrote the EFI bootloader for ia64, I spent a small amount of
> > time trying to make it possible to port to an i386 EFI environment. I
> > reckon it would only take a day or two to do the port. If someone
> > donates a nice new 20" iMac to me, I'll even do the work :-)
>
> Same offer here, though dfr_at_ would probably get it working sooner. :)



I might be picking one up this week... not sure yet.  So conflicted over
that or waiting to see what the new used to be a PowerMac will be.  [Do I
really want the mobile processor?]

Dave