Hasty Briefsbeta

The scariest boot loader code

a day ago
http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/boot_hppa.html
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  • #OpenBSD
  • #RetroComputing
  • #PA-RISC
  • The story revolves around an HP 9000/720 workstation used as a boot server for X terminals in a company.
  • After the company decommissioned the hardware, the author acquired the machine to run OpenBSD instead of HP/UX.
  • The OpenBSD porting effort for PA-RISC was led by Michael Shalayeff, with contributions from others like Matt Fredette.
  • A key challenge was enabling serial console functionality on HP 712 workstations, which HP had intentionally restricted to promote sales of the more expensive 715 models.
  • The author developed a method to modify the firmware's console path settings in OpenBSD's boot loader, allowing the HP 712 to run headless.
  • Testing all supported serial speeds (from 50 bps to 230400 bps) was a tedious process, especially at lower speeds where the boot menu took minutes to display.
  • The work eventually led to OpenBSD/hppa reaching a stable state, with the ability to configure serial consoles at various speeds beyond the default 9600 bps.
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