On Wed, 1 Oct 1997, Jon Grubbs wrote:

> I have been watching the list for some time trying to get a VS3100 M38
> booted.  Well, the "16 Meg" lance ethernet thread was the answer to getting
> it net booted.  All worked as expected after removing the troublesome extra
> 16 Megs of memory :)  Thanks to Brian for the helpful NetBoot FAQ.

Oooh... One of the many great mysteries is finally answered.  The 16Meg
barrier is an interesting one.  I'll have to update my HOWTO with that
one. 

It's good to see things picking up in port-vax again.  Maybe it's the dark
drudgery of autumn (for us northern hemisphere people anyway) that's
driving us back to toiling on our vaxen.  I've been mostly out of the mix
since at least late July.  My real-life (tm) job is taking up far more
time than I'd like, but I'm slowly working my way back into being a more
active member on port-vax.  I even lugged one of my VS3100/30's into work
with me and managed to get it successfully netbooted from an SGI running
IRIX 6.2.  I did have to use a Linux system to act as the MOP server as I
haven't gotten mopd to compile with the SGI MIPS Pro C compiler yet. 
Still having everything apart from the MOP server running under IRIX is
a start. 

--

The first few things on my personal VAX agenda include redoing the
VAXstation Netboot HOWTO using the SGML tools that are used in the Linux
HOWTO project.  And I guess I can now add an IRIX section to the list of
platforms you can netboot from. Then I've got a long outstanding debt of 
documentation to Gunnar who invited me to work on the NetBSD/VAX FAQ.

At the end of June and the beginning of July I started on writing some
friendly documentation for compiling your own kernel and building the 
NetBSD world, but that got dropped in the shuffle of summer and work.

Then I spent a couple of days in July getting my MicroVAX II running.
It is possible :-), though it required lots of help and tips from people
on port-vax.  It also wasn't an entirely friendly process given the
current docs on it.  

---

Other things on my wish list:

o A new NetBSD/VAX snapshot would be nice.  Once I review the port-vax
  archives and put together some do-it-yourself info compiling the latest
  sources (I've since forgotten nearly everything I'd done to get world
  to compile), I'd be happy to help out on assembling a new snapshot.
  One is really needed for anyone new coming on who wants to build the
  latest sources.

o Better (any?) SCSI support for the VS3100's.  I've got access to
  systems with SCSI hard drives and I've got one M38 with a SCSI floppy.
  I've got enough VAX resources now that I can provide a decent test-bed
  for new things. 

o Stand-alone driver for DEQNA/DELQA ethernet.  I think it would be very
  nice to have the option of bringing up the Q-bus systems on the
  network to build them as opposed to relying on floppys or TK50's.  But
  then I'm partial to this whole netbooting thing.

---

I do have one really nifty new fun toy that I need to get up and running.
It's a MicroVAX 3600 (masquerading as a 3800).  It's got a KDA50 
controller in it, 2 RA70's and a TK70.  Can't wait to get it humming
along.

-brian.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian D. Chase         Systems Coordinator        brian.chase@carpediem.com
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