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From: cca93013@sun1.bham.ac.uk (RFW Pigott)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: FreeBSD / NetBSD for VAX ?
Date: 31 May 1994 18:44:53 +0100
Organization: The University of Birmingham, UK
Lines: 48
Message-ID: <2sft2l$o7f@sun1.bham.ac.uk>
Reply-To: cca93013@sun1.bham.ac.uk
NNTP-Posting-Host: sun1.bham.ac.uk
Summary: Does anyone have FreeBSD or NetBSD running on a VAX ?
Has anyone actually ported FreeBSD or NetBSD to the VAX architecture ?
I have an 11/785 which is in need of exercise here, I am hoping to get
some form of UNIX running on the sucker.
I think that I should be able to compile it, but I'm more than a little
worried about device drivers... A VAX is a little out of the ordinary
when compared to a PC and the stuff I have seen so far appears to be PC
orientated.
I am after some sources (or a binary !?) which have been massaged to
work with a VAX-11/785. The devices that UNIX is going to have to talk
to are a TU78 Tape drive and 5 SMD winchester drives which hang off a
3rd party interface (I think it looks like a MASSBUS).
I would assume that someone somewhere has probably seen sources for
device drivers for this stuff somewhere anyway as it was fairly common
kit once upon a time (PDP-11/70s had both MASSBUS & UNIBUS).
The system is as follows :
MASSBUS :
1 x TU78 (Master) 9-Track 6250BPI tape thing (yeah with lovely
whirly bits and a cute diagnostic display which says
hello).
2 x RM03 One Broke, one probably ok, no clean looking packs
though ! These guys are probably overdue for an
appointment with a skip.
UNIBUS :
1 x ???? DEC board which drives 16 RS-232 ports.
1 x ???? Emulex boards which drive 32 RS-232 ports, which behave
like an early DEC board.
SBI :
1 x MBA MASSBUS adapter (have another spare)
1 x UBA UNIBUS adapter (with another 2 spare)
1 x SI9900 Some kind of adapter to an SI9900 SMD disk interface,
an educated guess suggests that this thing behaves like
an MBA. It has 5 472Mb SMD drives hanging off it...
32Mb RAM
1 x KA785 Processor (fairly recent ie: circa 87).
Console :
LSI11 Cute black box which runs diagnostics, loads the
instruction set and other messy things. It features an
8" floppy drive which I feel a pathalogical need to
replace with a kludged 3.5".
--
Rupert Pigott, impoverished student at Birmingham University
(email : cca93013@sun1.bham.ac.uk)