The Historical Journey of OpenBSD on SGI MIPS Hardware
By
brynet
Pulled from the oven just right. Trustworthy, fact-dense, deeply satisfying.
Summary
This article explores the historical journey of OpenBSD support on SGI hardware, tracing the relationship between BSD systems and MIPS architecture from early Unix variants like Risc/OS and Ultrix through to modern implementations. The content appears to be a detailed technical history covering the challenges, opportunities, and development efforts involved in porting OpenBSD to SGI's MIPS-based systems over several decades.
Key quotes
· 5 pulledInterest in supporting the MIPS architecture in BSD is about as old as the architecture itself
Risc/OS (the Unix variant running on MIPS' own workstations, before MIPS got bought by SGI and stopped manufacturing anything but processors) was based upon BSD code
so was Ultrix, Digital's first flavour of Unix, which ran on VAX but also on its MIPS-based DECstations
While there is a lot to tell on OpenBSD on SGI hardware alone, I think it is better to see a larger picture
Be warned that this story is quite long!
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