Hi folks,

   First, I want to thank everyone for the replies.  It seems there are
a few people working on the VAX port and even more wanting one.  I'd like
to offer my services in helping with the port. The cravas is I'm not very
familar with VAX equipment.  But I can learn.   Anyway here is the 
game plan I'm following to get netbsd running on the VS3100.

[] All the VS3100 I have are equipped with a single 3 1/2" floppy. (RX23)
   Playing around with the prom indicates it will boot from the 
   floppy by saying >> boot DUA2.  From what I can gather they are
   formatted like the IBM 1.2Mb 5 1/4" floppy. (Is that true?)  
   If so, that's a media that should be easy to work with. 

[] Use utilities like rawrite on the PC to move cross compiled code to
   the diskettes.  Write a floppy boot-loader.  Get a small kernel running.
   (From ramdisk? ala linux). Add in scsi routines, (borrowed from pmax
    port), ethernet drivers,  console routines, etc.  

[] Build the mkfs utility.  Format the scsi drive.  Get it booting.  Get the
   system on the net. 

[] finish the rest of the system files.     
 
      I spent the last couple of days, compiling and configuring gcc2.6.3
and the binutils 2.5.2 with host as hppa1.1-hp-hpux9.01 and target
as vax-dec-bsd.  Some simple tests indicate it compiles good code. 
I'm assuming that netbsd's magic and vax-dec-bsd magic are the
same.  Actually that was faily painless.  I hit a few snags (a couple
of undefined terms in the binutils. And forgetting to make LANGUAGE='c' 
in gcc) but that was it.  I examined the binary output of a few test
programs and it's generating vax code with a bsd type header.          

     I also found source for BSD-net2 on ftp.digital.com in /pub/BSD/net2
that had a few routines for vaxes. It looked like more than what I could
find in netbsd src tarfiles.  Also for the VS3100's it looks like the pmax
scsii code might work. I have Dec's scsi device support manual, and the 
coding examples have structures that look similar to the pmax scsi
structure. (ie. VS3100 and DS3100 both appear to use the NCR 5380).
I still have lots of studying to do on the source tree.   

Have Fun,
Chuck Sites
Electrical Engineering      System Programmer      University of Louisville
cbsite01@starbase.spd.louisville.edu               (502)-852-7020