Re: netbsd on vax 11/730; booting in sim

[Dave McGuire <mcguire%neurotica.com@localhost>]

On Jan 8, 2009, at 11:01 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> > > > > Good to see some activity on the list. I may have to go up to  
> > > > > my shop and
> > > > > pull the tarp off of my  11/750 all of this vaxen talk has got  
> > > > > me thinking
> > > > > of the good old days.
> > > > > > I might put the dust off an old 11/750 with an RP07 disk and  
> > > > > > see if
> > > > > > it works with 5.0... :-)
> > > > Yes, it's nice to see activity, plus it's nice to have NetBSD 5  
> > > > working as well as it does.
> > >
> > > ??? What do you mean "well"? I thing I've said it a number of  
> > > times by now. It don't. Atleast not on VAXen. And it hasn't been  
> > > for a year and a half. Except nobody tries to test it, so nobody  
> > > sees it.
> > ...and apparently no one is trying to fix it (though there sure  
> > seems to be an awful lot of whining about it...)
>
> Yep. I whine a lot. Noone else even seem to care.

  For the record, *I* care quite a bit, but have been struggling to  
keep myself fed for the past year and have been unable to spend time  
on much of anything outside of that.

  I suspect there are many here in that situation...not necessarily  
the "struggling" part, but in the "caring but can't do anything right  
now" part.

> True. But noone seems to. And the rest of NetBSD is running along a  
> path that is more or less causing NetBSD/vax to be unusable anyway.
> Maybe it's time to drop the VAX support?

  That would be very sad.

  It is clear, though, that NetBSD is becoming far too bloated for  
smaller machines.  I'm not one to ever suggest a fork, but perhaps  
it's time for VAXen to have "their own" BSD variant...one that isn't  
driven to have every kitchen-sink feature fattening things.

  Day to day, I run NetBSD on 400MHz-600MHz UltraSPARC machines that  
perform an amazing amount of work.  It is a FANTASTIC operating  
system for production uses like that.  It is rock-solid, very fast,  
and makes great use of the hardware.

  But on a VAX, not so much.

            -Dave

--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL