Re: [Etherboot-developers] Can i use etherboot on a ARM CPU system?

[<ke...@us...>]

>> >    I know the etherboot is based on x86 cpu system.
>> >But,can i re-compilier it to base on arm cpu system?
>> >If i can,then how to do this?
>> 
>> No, not without tons of work.  Too many x86isms. Read the developers
>> manual for an explanation.  And what is the ARM architecture standard to
>> aim for?
>
>But it should be possible to get it working.  It is just a matter
>of porting etherboot to the ARM.  With linuxBIOS we have shown it will
>work just fine in a stand-alone environment.  So  it matter of porting
>the support infrastructure.  And most hardware platforms have a lot of
>x86'isms, so that shouldn't be too bad.  Basically you need a timer,
>and a way to scan the pci bus.

Sure, I don't want to discourage people from trying, just pointing out
that Etherboot is not an app you can just recompile with a different
compiler target and have it work. It's is very architecture (I wouldn't
say machine, it's not really a machine instruction problem) dependent
program, and you need to understand which bits of it need to be
replaced. At least the bits are fairly well identified, but some
decisions still need to be made about memory placement, etc. Still it
can't get worse than x86 can it? :-)

There's a prize of a mention in the acknowledgements list and also the
announcements page on the web site for the first person to port it to
another architecture, if that is any encouragement. :-) I'm sure the
process will throw light on areas of Etherboot that need improvement.