Gregor McEwan was once rumoured to have said:
 
> My problem is that it has a PMAG-J card in it.  From what I
> understand after reading the NetBSD web pages and the archives of
> this list, this card is not supported in the current pmax port.  I
> also get the impression that it's not likely to be supported any
> time soon.  After I found this out I considered installing Linux but
> the pmax port of Linux doesn't support this card either.

The PMAG-J* cards seem to be a little uncommon in the MIPSen - I have
PMAG-JA with which I had the same problems.  From what I have
gathered, part of the problem is that the pmax port is still on rcons,
rather than wscons, amongst other issues.


> It currently has Ultrix installed (unsure of version - 4.4 maybe?)
> but I don't have any of the passwords so I can watch it boot to the
> console or even all the way to an X login screen but I can't do
> anything with it.

boot single! :)  Ultrix doesn't feature sulogin.

> So I have three questions that maybe someone can help me with: 

> (1) Is anyone working on support for the PMAG-J card, meaning I can
> just wait a little longer and all my problems will be solved?

I'll be working on the PMAG-JA code once I get my MIPS DECStation
5000/240 to Sydney.  I don't know if this will help any with the
PMAG-J though.  This will be the 2nd time I've sat down to do this
though - but at least this time I've a bit more time, and I've had
more experience with the NetBSD internals thanks to some time I spent
hacking on NetBSD/alpha at my last workplace.

> (2) If no-one is looking at this, how hard would it be for me to add
> support, keeping in mind that I've never written a device driver
> before (but I am a reasonably competent programmer)?  I am willing
> to spend time learning but if it's really tricky then I'm not sure
> if I'll make it.  Any suggestions and advice welcome.

Writing device drivers isn't that hard - reverse engineering
interfaces without documentaiton is.  Fortunately, you might find
useful code sitting in the alpha tree since the DEC3000 AXP series
machines are also turbochannel.

> (3)  As a last resort, does anyone know how I can get root access for my 
> Ultrix installation given that I don't even have a user account?

boot using the -s flag.  That'll give you single user mode.

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