> I envy your procession of that SIL3114 card, but I don't know if you can boot
> from that. I used to own a G4 PowerMac with a bootable SATA controller [...].
> I think it would all depend on the firmware supporting the controller (and
> vice versa, in other words, the controller I had was firmware compatible).

In contrast to the PPC Mac's OpenFirmware, the X5000's U-Boot contains an x86 emulator, so that's not an issue there.
As always*, the computer's firmware must be able to understand both the drive's partition scheme as well as the file system of the drive's partition containing the MorphOS boot.img. And as the boot.img happens to contain an SiI3114 driver, the MorphOS system files can reside on the same drive/partition (or on another drive connected to the SiI3114, if that's wanted) as well.


* Edit: According to cyfm, this is apparently not the case with MorphOS on Cyrus/X5000 and Sam460, where a second-level bootloader (Hyperbootloader) is deployed, so that U-Boot loads the Hyperbootloader, which in turn loads the MorphOS boot.img.

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 03.04.2020 - 13:16 ]

>In contrast to the PPC Mac's OpenFirmware, the X5000's U-Boot contains an x86 emulator, so that's not an >issue there.

I've heard that, but how that works with the code embedded on a card is beyond me.

>As always, the computer's firmware must be able to understand both the drive's partition scheme as well >as the file system of the drive's partition containing the MorphOS boot.img. And as the boot.img happens >to contain an SiI3114 driver, the MorphOS system files can reside on the same drive/partition (or on >another drive connected to the SiI3114, if that's wanted) as well.

Sound like he merely needs to move the drive to the SiI3114 card, although I'm not sure how you would specify that drive (as a boot drive) without some low level selection (as in a BIOS). Or would the MorphOS bootloader be engineered to get around that?

You've piqued my interest in this, Andreas.

Hopefully, John will keep us informed as to his progress.

>> the X5000's U-Boot contains an x86 emulator

> how that works with the code embedded on a card is beyond me.

The x86 emulator executes the x86 code embedded on the card, just like has always been done on the Pegasos or the Efika 5200B (both with SmartFirmware).

> Sound like he merely needs to move the drive to the SiI3114 card

Move from where?

> I'm not sure how you would specify that drive (as a boot drive) without some
> low level selection (as in a BIOS). Or would the MorphOS bootloader be
> engineered to get around that?

I don't know the details of U-Boot but it's clear that U-Boot needs to be told (via a set variable or something) where the MorphOS boot.img is* and that the boot.img needs to be told where the MorphOS system files are (unless they are on the same partition so that they are found automatically, or the RDB 'bootable' flag is set on the MorphOS system partition).


* Edit: According to cyfm, this is apparently not the case with MorphOS on Cyrus/X5000 and Sam460, where a second-level bootloader (Hyperbootloader) is deployed, so that U-Boot loads the Hyperbootloader, which in turn loads the MorphOS boot.img.

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 03.04.2020 - 13:18 ]

I have moved the discussion to a new thread since it is now primarily about installation.

New X5000 install thread

> I have a Radeon FireMV 2250 (PCIex1) that I use for Linux on my X5000.
> Is that supported in MorphOS?

Support for the card has been inofficially added last year, and now officially with MorphOS 3.18:

"Added more FireMV cards from the supported Radeon family pool, namely FireMV 2200 (devid 0x5b65), FireMV 2250 (0x719b) and FireMV 2260 (0x95cf)"
https://www.morphos-team.net/releasenotes/3.18

> As far as I can see from tha compability list is this specific model is not

The newly supported FireMV cards have not been added to the list, while other 3.18-specific changes have been made to the page.