Hi,

	As the user-base for NetBSD is slowly growing and some of you have
had some time to play with the system, I think it's a good time for
a status report. I also want to get an idea of what _you_ think 
NetBSD/Atari is lacking, or what could be done better. This way,
I will be able to make a list with some priorities attached. As you
might guess, it's also a probe for volunteers ;-) I can't do it all
by myself....

The following list is ordered at random....

    - Parallel port support.
	I am not only thinking about printers. If I am right, the
	pc532-port also has PLIP. This might also be nice.
    - Sound support
    - Statclock/Profclock
	So we could do some kernel profiling and optimalisation.
    - Atari specific docs/manual pages.
	Some of the topics:
	    - The mouse device
	    - Using disklabels
	    - Keyboard mapping
	    - boot process
	    - (virtual) console
	    - floppy
    - X
	I have had some private mail about this. The current status is:
	    X _is_ running on NetBSD/Atari but in mono only. I have
	    only tested it on ST-HIGH, but I think TT-HIGH should also
	    work. I have hacked the Xdaniver server from NetBSD/Amiga
	    a little bit to accomplish this. Currently Adventurer/Explorer/...
	    is the only one running it besides me. I can post some instructions
	    to the list how to set it up. It really should be made to run
	    in TT-MED and/or a Falcon mode like that, to make it usable for
	    people unable to use TT-HIGH. I don't have enough time to spare
	    to do development on X currently, as I feel that I should
	    better put my effort in the NetBSD/Atari 'core'.
    - Support an iso character set on the console
	For people that needs special characters, like the german/french/...
	this would be nice I guess. I already made the console-code able
	to display chars > 0x7f last week. Some work should be done to
	make the set iso-<damn, forgot the number ;-)> compliant. If I
	am right, Thomas Gerner is looking into this...
    - SCSI
	There are some outstanding issues here:
	  - On the Falcon, the kernel still polls for the end of DMA,
	    this should be solved, because it gives too much interrupt
	    latency. However, it would be nice to have a Falcon owner
	    do this. Modifying a driver on a platform you don't have
	    is rather tedious and frustrating, both for me and the
	    one testing it. As an indication: It took 5(!) months to
	    get NetBSD running on the Falcon. With most of the time spend
	    to get the SCSI-driver going. I like to thank Billy, Thomas
	    and Helmar for their efforts in trying all my test kernels!
	  - The driver should properly reject unsupported messages.
	    I am currently working on this.
    - Floppy
	Can someone verify if 1.44Mb is _really_ working?

    - Panic dumps
	The current kernel is able to produce a dump, but there are
	no tools yet to examine it...

    - Terminal definition for the console
	As the number of lines on the console is variable, the default
	vt220 is not always sufficient. Sometimes, you will end up with
	a one line scrolling region at the bottom of the screen.

I guess this should give all of you some food for thought. Don't be
shy ;-) I need your input,

Leo.