I have seen no evidence on this list or elsewhere that anyone is doing
substantial work to make the pmax port run. 

The pmax support code from 4.4 which was contributed looks to a cursory
examination reasonably complete, and were there the momentum behind the pmax
port that there is behind, say, the sparc port or the sun 3 port, it seems
certain that it would at least begin to be up and running soon.

Yet nothing seems to be happening, even though those with pmaxen would seem to
have more impetus to make NetBSD go than those using sparcs or sun 3s, where
at least the vendor-supplied OS isn't *too* much of a cow.

Now, some time ago Theo suggested that the pmax support would be far more
easily integrated into the magnum branch than hacked on to fit into the
NetBSD-current tree.  It does certainly look that way.  I, and I assume many
others, took that as a signal to hurry up and wait for the magnum branch to be
made available, at which point the task at hand could be attacked by many
people working in parallel, rather than a few extremely skilled people working
with access to sun-lamp.

But the magnum branch isn't to be had.  And as I understand it gaining access to
it requires making a commitment to do major work on the port, and on NetBSD,
with regularity.  (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

I, for one, don't have the time or resources to be able to do that.  And yet I
still feel that were that level of commitment not entailed, I could likely do
at least some small amount of work on my own in helping port NetBSD to the
pmax, one of which is on my desk and in constant use.  I'm sure there are many
others like me; I'm sure that if we all participated, the port _would run_,
and in a not unreasonable amount of time.  

And yet we all sit mute and wait.

Isn't there any better solution?


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