hello

> So I just got done telling you all about the nifty new VAX 4000/200 that
> I aquired over the weekend. As it turns out, a friend of mine who works
> for a very well-wired company here has gotten approval to move my new
> box into their computer room, and plug into their switch (can you say
> bandwidth?). With the wealth of drive space I have, I'm considering the
> posibility of hosting a NetBSD mirror. Would a 4000/200 have enough
> OOMPH to tackle such a task, given sufficient bandwidth? According to

wow!

i'd say a 4000/200 has plenty enough oomph for this kind of task. It was 
not too long ago that one would see 3100/30's and 38's as timesharing 
systems with 20 or 30 users on them (running Ultrix, mind you) and they 
survived.. with 32 MB of memory this sounds liek quite a decent box!! 

> the NetBSD Hardware Reference, it's only 5 VUPs. Anybody like to suggest
> a connection limit? 32 Megs memory, ungodly amounts of HD. I also
> wouldn't be opposed to using it to churn out regular snapshots, although
> my 4000/60 (at 12 VUPs) might be better suited for that.

yeah, for compiles nothing beats a bigger memory and more processing 
power :)

> 
> Of course, all of this depends on getting a stable running build on the
> 4000/200. How can I help?

the work is in progress! i guess you could join in the effort to 
test kernels. I recently got my hands on a KA660 TM (thanks jon!) and 
several others are also working on it! i dont have a mahcine to test 
anythign on, though. SHAC support is the thing i'd like to focus on. Do
you have any DSSI disks?? my netbsd/vax system is a 3100/48 with only 12 
MB of memory, but in the next few days i might be asking you to test a 
kernel for me, once i get the time to try to integrate it.. 

> Also - what is the status of graphics head support on the 4000/60? How
> can I help in that respect?

manuals!
i am not very familiar with the VAXstations 4000 (hoping to gain insight 
into the KA48's cache from this 660 manual though :) 
As an aside, i tried just for the hell of it to boot my VLC from a disk 
with 1.4.1 sd bootblocks. it just hung. any ideas? isnt the bootstrap 
supposed to use the prom routines for loading the rest? am i being 
stupid, (which is quite possible! :) or am i right in thinking that the 
bootblocks need to be modified to work on VLCs? 

happy hacking,
isildur