Subject: Re: NetBSD/pdp10 ?
To: Perry E. Metzger <perry@wasabisystems.com>
From: Anders Magnusson <ragge@ludd.luth.se>
List: tech-kern
Date: 03/06/2002 23:17:02
> 
> Brian Chase <vaxzilla@jarai.org> writes:
> > > But the PDP-10 GCC port will be usable RSN, so maybe a NetBSD port
> > > should be possible?
> > 
> > What better way to exercise the portability of NetBSD?  We've got 32-bit
> > and 64-bit archictures sorted.  Certainly there would be some challenges
> > left with 36-bit support, no?  Given the availability of several PDP-10
> > emulators and the work on GCC, I don't see why it couldn't be done.
> > 
> > NetBSD/pdp10 anyone?
> 
> The machine only had 18 bit pointers. It is a little light in terms of
> real memory space -- only about a megabyte in a full Moby.
> 
> Extended PDP-10 architectures have been built -- the failed DEC
> Jupiter project and of course the TOAD-1.
> 
That's not entirely true. The KL10-E (Used in 2060/2065 IIRC, someone may
correct me) had extended mode addressing which gave you a virtual
address space of 30 bits (but I think only 23 bits were used).
It should be quite possible to memory-wise to get NetBSD to run on
such machine, but I think the amount of work to make it run would
not be negligable :-)

-- Ragge