*BSD News Article 31063


Return to BSD News archive

Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!hookup!yeshua.marcam.com!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!olivea!decwrl!pa.dec.com!usenet.pa.dec.com!jkh
From: jkh@nx.ilo.dec.com (Jordan Hubbard)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Porting 4.4-Lite to VAX
Date: 17 May 1994 12:55:16 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Galway Ireland
Lines: 28
Message-ID: <JKH.94May17135516@nx.ilo.dec.com>
References: <1994May11.190620.29816@dsi.bc.ca> <2qrde7$9mh@nermal.cs.uoguelph.ca>
	<2qtcs7$2vi@region.regent.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host: nx.ilo.dec.com
In-reply-to: arg@regent.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de's message of 12 May 1994 16:01:43 +0200

In article <2qtcs7$2vi@region.regent.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de> arg@regent.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de (Armin Gruner) writes:

   >work being done on porting NetBSD to the VAX architecture. Also, my vague
   >understanding is that both NetBSD and FreeBSD will be switching over
   >to a 4.4BSD Lite code base, making it into an unencumbered bootable
   >system. (Others out there in net land probably have a much better

Just to confirm this (speaking for the FreeBSD team), it's true.  Both
groups are legally compelled to go in this direction (thank god it's a
technically fulfilling direction as well! :-).

   There are VAX portions (i.e. drivers) in the networking-II-release
   (well, which must be replaced by 4.4lite when it is available), but I
   think you can always use it as a reference. Networking Release II is still
   available on gatekeeper and uunet.

There's also some VAX support in 4.4 Lite, though it's pretty green as
well.  As it says in /sys/vax/README:

	The VAX architecture does not compile in 4.4BSD, as it has
	not been converted to the new VM.  It is here for porting
	information purposes only.

The overall structure seems to indicate that it might run on big vaxen
with some work, however.  The mba/ and bi/ subdirectories actually
appear to have some code in them.

					Jordan