First question to always ask is "is my hardware supported?" but this
should generally be after you first look at the NetBSD/vax pages on
http://www.netbsd.org/ to see if it is supported ot not... but we can
certainly let this slide as first contact with NetBSD is not always
through their website.

For the VAXstation 4000 VLC, the answer is still "no", but it does look
like there's good progress being made with at least the netboot loader.
Still, that's *very* far from getting the kernel running on the 4000 VLC.
It's like saying "yay, I've got LILO running on my VAX!"

On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Hans Christian Saustrup wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 02, 1999 at 08:30:27PM +0000, Paul wrote:
> 
> > worked fine with b/40
> 
> Uhmn.. My girlfriend just left 4 months for Israel, giving me some time to
> fool around with the pizza-box (VLC) again. I've been having some trouble
> with it tho, most likely due to my lack of knowledge about NetBSD or VAX.
> I read various documents on remotebooting the VAX from Linux, and after some
> serious debugging, I made it load the mop-thinggy. After several frustrated
> moments, I found a kernel, located it in my root directory and renamed it to
> 'netbsd' (Linux people don't know this - how about putting it somewhere in
> the faq? ;-))

>From the dated but not entirely obsolete VAX Netboot HOWTO, see the
following section:

  3.5.  Setting up The VAX Client's NFS Root Directory and Swap File


> Here's the procedure: (blank lines erased)
> 
> >>> b/40 esa0
> -ESA0
> >> NetBSD/vax boot [990228 22:33] <<
> : /netbsd
> boot: client IP address: 10.0.0.66
> boot: client name: vaxine
> root addr=10.0.0.1 path=/export/vaxclient/root
> 822036+45628+164848[+66804+74936] start 0x8e4
>   83 BOOT SYS
> >>>
> 
> .. WHAT NOW?! It would appear that Vaxine loaded the kernel, but - this
> being the first netbsd boot I've ever seen - what on earth is happening, and
> why does it abort?

Congratulations on getting this far!  No small task for those who're not
familiar with running diskless configs.  The bootloder gets run, and then
it tries and succeeds at kicking off the kernel.  But since the kernel
doesn't support the VAXstation 4000 VLC, it quickly dies.

> Another thing - the pizzabox has a wierd RGB adapter on the rear end. I was
> bored, and slightly depressed about my box not working (and my cablemodem
> was down) so I decided to try connecting it to my Eizo FlexScan. Knowing
> that monitors need h+v sync, I was not too optimistic, but is would seem the
> Eizo could de-multiplex (?) the sync signals. Pretty neat! I wonder if
> NetBSD supports the onboard display?

Mono framebuffer on the VAXstation 2000 and VAXstation 3100s only.

> I'm also desperately looking for techspecs on the keyboard and mouse, since
> I got my box without _anything_, and I would _really_ love to use it
> directly too.

Not sure what the keyboards and mice are on the VS4000.  

> Keep up the good work! This is pretty neat! :-)

It may be a while before the VS4000 VLC is supported.  I don't know
though, Michael Kukat seems very resolved to get it running.  Finding the
hardware specs is always the difficult part.

-brian.
---
Brian "JARAI" Chase | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ | VAXZilla LIVES!!!