On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, Steve Woodford wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, Bernd Walter wrote:
> 
> > I own such a Board and would like to run NetBSD on it.
> > >From what I understood it it currently not supported.
> > Does anyone know how different it is from supported 147 card?
> 
> As I understand it, the '141 has very little (1MB?) memory, a 68020 (I
> don't know if it even has an MMU co-pro) and no onboard network or scsi.
> Documentation for it will also be hard to find.

The MVME141 itself is little more than CPU/FPU, console and support.
It has 68030/68882 (-2 is 33MHz, -3 is 50MHz), TOD clock like the '147
and 2 serial ports on the front panel (female DB-9 DTE).

The board itself has only 128K (IIRC) of SRAM which it uses as a
springboard before its VME and VSB interfaces are enabled and it has
access to VME or VSB-resident memory.  Actually, I think VSB (or the
simplified VMX cable on P2ac) is generally the preferred bus for
memory.  I don't think I've tried mine with just VME memory.

peripheral I/O, particularly disks, are to be found on other
VME cards in the system.

I have a mostly complete MVME141-2 system as follows:

    '141-2 33MHZ CPU board
    '224-2 8MB VSB(VMX)/VME DRAM
    '323   ESDI hard disk interface (4 drives max)
    '350   QIC-02 streaming tape interface.
    '374   Ethernet interface.
    '332XT 8-port serial, 1 parallel I/O board.
    '393   dual-head X11 display/keyboard/mouse interface (probably dead)

This system was the MWS (Maintenance WorkStation) for a CRAY
X/Y-MP and ran SVR3.2 UNIX.  I actually got it to boot a couple
of times.  I hacked /etc/passwd by searching the root disk with
141-Bug and manually patching and re-writing disk sectors.  But
by the time I'd finished, the disk had degraded to the point
that it wouldn't boot again. 

> As a result, it's unlikely NetBSD will ever support this board.

As you can see, one of the things it really needs is support for
more VME-bus peripheral devices.  There are some interesting things
I've seen in the OpenBSD arena, such as the '328 SCSI board and
the '376 Ethernet.

I got interested in NetBSD-mvme68k for that same purpose--to perhaps
work on a port to the '141-based system.  But it seems the problem
is universal:  lack of programmer's documentation for the various
boards involved.  Motorola doesn't seem to acknowledge their existance.

If anyone has manuals on any of the above, share and enjoy!

In the meantime, I had my '147 (RIP) and my '167 to hack on, but
no time or space in which to do so.


Hope this helps.

--
John D. Baker                                       I hear, and I forget.
jdbaker@NoSpAm!blkbox.com                          I see, and I remember.
http://www.NoSpAm!blkbox.com/~jdbaker             I do, and I understand.
Amiga, OS/2, Free Un*xes:  The cure for M$!     --Ancient Chinese Proverb