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From: escribe@dial.pipex.com (Alan Barclay)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc,comp.sys.next.programmer,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.sys.next.advocacy
Subject: NeXTBSD - 4.4BSD For NeXTstep machines ?
Date: 25 Jan 1996 14:33:37 GMT
Organization: The Electric Scribe Co. Ltd.
Lines: 71
Sender: barclay@frodo.ntc.nokia.com (Alan Barclay)
Message-ID: <4e84c1$m0n@axl02it.ntc.nokia.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: frodo.ntc.nokia.com
Keywords: NeXT, Plan9
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.sys.next.misc:38690 comp.sys.next.programmer:22756 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:2136 comp.sys.next.advocacy:32610
Some ideas for you to think about ...
1. *** 4.4 BSD port to NeXT Black Hardware ***
2. *** OPENSTEP 4.0 binaries support (m68k, FIP, SP, HP)
under 4.4 BSD port ***
The following are extracts from NeXT newsgroup articles.
Many other NeXT users have also expressed concern about the
elderly 4.3BSD (on Mach) which NeXT sells as its OS.
Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU> wrote:
> Black hardware is, for the most part, still reasonably capable
> Unix hardware. I have reason to believe that either Linux or
> BSD Lite would perform on black hardware as a much better UNIX
> workstation than NEXTSTEP does.
Garance A Drosehn <gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu> wrote:
> One would wonder how much information about NeXT hardware people
> could figure out by looking at Plan 9. There's some students on
> campus here interested in Plan 9, and I've been musing about
> putting one of my NeXT's towards that.
louie@va.pubnix.com (Louis A. Mamakos) wrote
> I'd love to run FreeBSD or NetBSD on my black hardware.
> Perhaps starting with the Plan 9 release is an approach? Has there
> ever been any released documentation on the hardware specs, registers,
> etc? Who knows, maybe the SCSI bus could do synchronous tranfers?
paul@nagshead.plsys.co.uk (Paul Lynch) wrote:
> Personally, it seems to me that the BSD 4.4 Lite upgrade was the
> potentially most valuable to NeXTSTEP users. It will be a great shame if
> that is lost.
1. Back in Oct/Nov 95 I made some noises myself in some groups about
porting 4.4BSD to NeXT black hardware. I thought then and still think that
the effort to do this would not be very great as 4.4 BSD, in the form of NetBSD,
is already compatible with m68k architecture and Plan 9 sources, from AT&T,
contain the specific hardware information required to implement low level
drivers. At the time I heard some noises from a few others who were interested
but no real action from anybody interested in doing a port. At the time, I was
in no position to give time to such a task, but I now am more available and
have a couple of mono stations sitting idle for such a task.
If NetBSD (4.4BSD) were ported to NeXTstation (and NeXTstation colour)
hardware - How many of you would be interested in using it? How many
of you would be interested in helping?
2. The recent unhappiness with NeXTs elderly 4.3BSD and their lack of further
development for it has prompted another idea by current NEXTSTEP 3.x users.
Forget NeXTs 4.3BSD and run OPENSTEP on another UNIX instead. At first I
thought this idea was ridiculous, but now I am much less sure and would welcome
input from others. If we remember that 4.3BSD binaries for one machine will execute
on other machines 4.3BSD (with the same processor architecture) then perhaps we
can simply take the OPENSTEP libraries and binaries and run them under our
own 4.3BSD compatible OS, say 4.4BSD NetBSD.
Infact, this would not work immediately because of the fact that NeXTs
4.3BSD is really MACH. However there is a version of 4.4BSD for MACH called
4.4BSD LITES (produced at Helsink Uni) - (Slightly strange coincidence is that
Linux comes out of Helsink too!). Perhaps these sources offer the possibility
of running native OPENSTEP libraries and binaries on an upto date UNIX (for
those people who really want OPENSTEP on UNIX rather than on NT/W95).
I accept that there are hurdles to overcome, not least of which might be the
fact that LITES is based on a version of MACH later than that which NeXT
used or that new code to support the NeXT MAB executable file formats
would be required. I am interested in your comments on this.
Alan Barclay
The Electric Scribe Co. Ltd.
escribe@dial.pipex.com
alan@escribe.co.uk (Down!)