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

["Andrew Sporner" <asporner%googlemail.com@localhost>]

Hi Mouse,

For some reason my posts are not appearing on the list (they were!)
so if you reply, I would apprecate that the list is on it.  -- Thanks

I have been away from the list for about 10 years so I see a lot has
happened.  A few questions come to mind.

1.  When they have their "brainstorming sessions" is not a representative
from each port asked, or is it assumed that "wintel" is the core platform
and everything is ported from there?

2.  How many active people are still doing vax stuff?  By unhappy fate
with contracts  I will have extra time on my hands so I intend to work
on the frame buffer for the VaxStation 4000/60 and whatever else is
interesting (needed).

>  The real question is why the VAX people are even still here, not why
>  they're not contributing more.  Perhaps Johnny is right and it's time
>  for another fork.  NetBSD seems to be no longer interested in
>  supporting the legacy systems that were once one of its big strengths;
>  maybe it's time for a BSD that is.

I have been working in the embedded systems for the last 8 or so
years designing routers.  The first one was at first NetBSD based, then
switched to FreeBSD because of PCI performance was better
(http://www.nitro-switch.de) and now I am working in Vxworks.
I would much prefer to use somebody BSD like but alas without MMU
it doesn't go.  Linux on the other hand does.

I would think enough momentum could be generated by the inherrent
portablility of NetBSD to work also as an Embedded system and also
be usefull for Legacy systems as well..

The trick and most difficult thing is getting people to communicate with
each other--which has never been easy in ANY BSD port :-)

My EUR 0.02 worth (canadian has more value :-)

Cheers



Andy


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