netbsd on vax 11/730; I could use a little debug help

[Brad Parker <brad%heeltoe.com@localhost>]

Hi,

Long ago (like 4 years ago) did some work on netbsd 1.6ZL to get it to
work on a 11/730.  I made some progress but didn't get it going.  I did,
however, use the 'enhanced' loader I hacked to do a lot of other 11/730
hacking on a real 730.

Recently I decided to try again.  I fixed some long standing bugs in my
loader and hacked a copy of 11/780 simh to look more like a 730.  I've
got the registers and interrupts working, and the 730-only kernel boots
to the same point as a 780 stock kernel does on simh.

Now I could use some pointers from someone who's better at netbsd.

Basically it boots to the point where it wants to run /sbin/init.  It
loads the file (/sbin/init) and runs the scheduler but nothing happens.

I should note that I'm using an nfs root.  But I don't think that is the
problem (or it does not seem to be).

The elf loader seems to be happy.  I also made a statically linked
"hello world" just to eliminate any library issues.  That did not help.

How does one debug this sort of thing?  Any ideas?

(I always get stuck when the demand paging of an executable just
sort of "stops"...)

I'm wondering if I have a console problem.  /dev/console does
exist.  any good way to test that? 

thanks!

ps: my goal is to get a 1.6+ version of netbsd running on my 11/730 with
4mb of ram.  I'd like to get the latest, but I'm going to start
with the 1.6-ish version I have.  In the end the patch won't be that
big.

-brad