Hi !

> You know, if there is one good the about Pee Cees, it is that whatever can
> run on a 12MHz 386 can run on a PIII Xeon 500MHz box.  It may not be
> optimized (at that speed, who could tell?), but atleast it will work!  As
> great as the vax is, this is something that could have been better.  Low
> level stuff.  There is so much work that must be put into getting it to
> run on the next model, it just isn't even funny.
> 
> No wonder VMS isn't "The Greatest<tm>".  There is a ton of crap in the
> low-level stuff that is specific to certain models, all billion and three
> or so.  The only good part about this is that when DEC made the screwed up
> hardware, it worked, and it usually worked very well.  I guess that is the
> price we pay for advancement?

Don't know exactly, what you wanted to say me this way, but i think i 
understoot your point-of-view. This is the point why you could live perfectly
with 20 MB harddisk and 512 KB of RAM on your 286, and run the necessary office
products to work a bit efficient. Today you run the same office products, some
more functions are inside, some hidden games, and the price is: You now need
a box which is about 50-100 times faster, has 100 times more RAM... and the
systems get more instable because of lots of unnecessary functions. (and hidden
games... when talking of M$ :-)

But with NetBSD on the VAXen you can just kick out everything you don't need
from the kernel, and build a tiny kernel, individual for your platform. So you
gan get a bit in the direction of having an optimized system for it, no matter
if you use a MicroVAX II or a VAX 4000/500. CPUs change, architecture tries
to stay a bit compatible, you have to code some things to make the new hardware
happy, and to get the binaries as compatible as possible.

So long... Michael

> 
> Regards,
> John Havard
> 
> > > bootserver and the path to the kernel and tries to start the kernel 
> > > displaying a row of different numbers and a rotating "/" to indicate work i 
> > > progress but crashes as i should ?
> > > With out the necessary support for the CPU in the kernel ? Am I on the 
> > > right track ?
> > 
> > So, i just screwed in a bit of CPU support, for now without cache, i should
> > know if it works this way, before enabling the cache stuff. Very interesting
> > facts are: is QBus working, are the devices detected. So, if someone has some
> > QBus cards, no matter what, maybe a DHV-11 or a TQK50 or so, i want to know
> > if the kernel sees the devices.
> > 
> > CPU support is now only added for VAX 4000/500 (KA680), the 4000/200 and
> > 4000/105 need some further information, i'll try to find out why the booter
> > crashes on these machines.
> > 
> > So, testers: download the following URL to get a fresh test kernel:
> > 
> > http://www.camaronet.de/download/netbsd-990911.zip
> > 
> > Results wanted.
> > 
> > so long... Michael
> > 
> > 
>