How are things looking?

[peterg at ptree32.com.au]

Hi Alex,

>I've got a Beige G3 running NetBSD that's pulling 
>web/mail server duty at blarf.homeip.net.  Unfortunately
>I'm really missing a lot of the little things from FreeBSD
>(my other box is a P2-450 running FreeBSD-current).
>
>So now I've got a few questions:
>
>Is FreeBSD even bootable on any old world machines?  
>If not, what's standing in the way?  The boot loader?  
>Is there an XCOFF version of the boot loader?  Lack of
>driver support?

 Yes to both. Converting FreeBSD's loader to XCOFF (or
the minor variant understood by OpenFirmware) shouldn't
be too hard. Device support is a bit of an issue. I do
own a beige G3, and will attempt to support it at some
point. It shares much of the hardware of the B&W G3, which
I am working on currently, so all is not lost.

 As for any earlier non-G3 boxes, I'd say there's not much
chance of running FreeBSD on them.

>Cross building from ia32 seems to be broken

 As David mentioned this has been working. I'll make sure
things are back to normal when I return from BSDCon.

later,

Peter.