Subject: Re: NetBSD/pc532 directions
To: None <port-pc532@netbsd.org>
From: Dieter <netbsd@sopwith.solgatos.com>
List: port-pc532
Date: 06/23/2006 20:18:07
If NetBSD supports a toaster, it should be able to support the ns32k.
Is the pdp10 still supported?  What do other low volume platforms do?
The main feature of NetBSD has always been that it supports platforms
that other BSDs (and that penguin thing) don't.  If this support goes
away, what is the point of NetBSD?

Personally I can live without pthreads, or ELF, or shared libraries.

> GCC dropped support for ns32k in gcc4, so we lose big-time there.

Hard to live without a C compiler.  :-(

Rather than attempting heroic efforts to keep -current working
forever, or dropping support altogether, perhaps there is a middle
ground where the pc532 is supported through release FOO, and
release FOO continues to get bugfixes, but not new features?

On the flip side, can we think up something useful for these
machines to do?  Nice arch, low power consumption, but a slow
CPU by today's standards, and the SCSI as system bus doesn't
work so well if there aren't SCSI-to-whatever devices to plug
into it.  There is the somewhat rare SCSI-to-Ethernet, has
anyone found other SCSI-to-Something devices that could help
these machines earn their keep?

It would make a dandy RS-232 port server, but there are fewer
and fewer RS-232 devices as time goes on.

Is the Ethernet fast enough to use as a firewall for DSL speeds?

Other ideas?