Subject: Hurrah!
To: None <port-vax@netbsd.org>
From: tom <tom@soryu.pas.rochester.edu>
List: port-vax
Date: 01/27/1999 10:58:57
It looks like things have progressed quite a bit since the last time I
played with NetBSD/VAX.  Congratulations on the amount of progress you've
all made.

I'm now running the snapshot from ftp.netbsd.org (with the 990101 kernel) on
a 3100/M38 with 24mb and an Apple/Quantum 500mb SCSI drive.  It's not a speed
demon, but it seems pretty stable so far.  (I'm typing this message on it...)

I have a couple of questions, since some of the online docs seem a bit out of
date:

- How do I make this machine bootable directly from SCSI?  Right now, I'm 
doing something like this:

BOOT/3 ESA0:
(bootparams tell the machine to nfs-mount "/" from another box)
boot netbsd.990101
when the kernel asks for a root device, I enter sd0a in place of the nfs root

Can I just put the boot loader right on the SCSI drive?  There didn't seem to
be one for "sd" devices in /usr/mdec/boot.  I'd love to get rid of the need
to boot from the network.  (I might try doing this w/a floppy as well, though
I'm not sure if the boot image can see the SCSI drives.  Can't hurt to try,
though...)

- Is support for the SCSI controllers in the 4000/60 and the 3100/M76 
forthcoming?  (I've got several of each sitting here, and I would love
to have the extra speed since the 3100/M38 is "kinda pokey". :) )

- Can you steal controllers/code for controllers from the TurboChannel
Alphas for use in the 4000/60, or is there a 64-bit issue for the
hardware as well as the software?

That's it for now.  Again, congratulations, and I appreciate all of the
hard work y'all have put into this.  As soon as there's an X server, there
will be about 30 little VAXstations quickly migrating to NetBSD here. :)

- Tom G.

--
Tom Guptill                     Department of Physics and Astronomy
UNIX SA                         University of Rochester  Rochester, NY USA
t g p t @ p a s . r o c h e s t e r . e d u