The first step in porting µnOS to Pegasos is done: the 'µnOS on PPC' team announces that it is possible now to load and start the first raw binary over Ethernet on an ODW.

This may sound trivial for people who have to do with Linux and derivates, as they have many tools already available if not the whole toolchain for this. But please keep in mind that µnOS is completely original, not derived from any other project, and already runs on the x86 and XScale platforms. For those platforms the COFF is used. For the PPC platform, we have to deal with the ELF. Thus, the first step (prior to start porting) is (and since today 'was') to create a decoder tool which decodes the ELF containing the kernel etc. into a raw image that can be loaded and executed directly. OpenFirmware on Pegasos only supports loading ELF files with a fixed address base. This is not sufficient in case of loading µnOS. According to the versatility of the file format, decoding ELF is merely writing a complete linker. This is the reason why this task, easy at first sight, took some days.

The next step will be to get the Sphere microkernel (or at least parts of it) working on Pegasos. We will keep you updated on further progress. :)