NetBSD Bob writes:
> 
> 4.3 is lots lighter.  I run the Quasijarus port, which, after some bit
> twiddling, runs and installs pretty well.  

I've heard good things about Quasijarus, and they have an interesting sense 
of humor. 

This brings up something that has been bugging me for a while.  What exactly 
is in the recent kernels that VAX people are trying to keep up with?  Asked 
another way, what would the VAX world loose between NetBSD 1.5 & BSD 4.3 
kernels?  How much user-land would one loose access to by having a leaner 
kernel?  Other than MI SCSI drivers, there isn't a lot of commonality with 
other archs, is there? 

With the feature bloat in the NetBSD kernel mostly relevant to other 
architectures, it seems to me that there may be value in having a "VAX/BSD" 
based on something more suited to the hardware.  One could start with 
something like Quasijarus, and work from there. 

Just a thought.  I know my 3100m40 is too slow to be much more than a 
curiosity these days. 

> What specific 4.3 port were you using back then?  

Err...good question.  I don't know.  I think there was an awful lot of local 
work done.  We had some hot-shot Unix kernel guys running around, mostly 
working on the Clouds distributed operating system.  Next time I talk to 
Henry Strickland, I'll ask him. 

> IFF any of that stuff is still extant,  pass it my way and I will 
> bounce it along to the archives.

Unlikely, but I'll ping a few folks. 

> As a demo of how light 4.3 is, the compiled kernel is around 150k
> and it compiles in well under 30 minutes.... on an MVII 9 mb box,
> with esdi drives, no less.....(:+}}...

Along the same lines, I recently picked up a Heurikon VME532 system (if 
anyone knows anything about this beast, do let me know off list).  30MHz 
NS32532, 4MB VRAM, 170MB ESDI disk.  It runs GNX 3.1, which was National 
Semis Unix flavor, and the basic distribution + development system fits in 
about 115MB.  The thing boots faster than any of my recent vintage BSD 
machines, and is astonishingly responsive.  Remarkable. 

Ken Seefried