At 02:30 PM 5/14/00 +0200, Rink Springer wrote:
>I finally got my VAX 4000/300 netbooting NetBSD/vax (yay!)... NetBSD 
>doesn't seem to recognize the SCSI adapter it has (I think it's onboard or 
>something, havn't opened the box yet), but it also hasn't found the DSSI 
>stuff... (the box contains 3 DSSI disks, according to SHOW DSSI).

That is correct, there is currently no support for the on board DSSI 
controller. I have started to look into this but its not exactly easy to 
find all the necessary information. This is what I know:
         1) The DSSI bus is controlled through the SHAC chip.
         2) The SHAC actually is more like a CI bus than SCSI or anything 
like that.
I've been told (but not proven to my own satisfaction yet)
         3) DSSI disks use the MSCP protocol between them.

I was fortunate that my 4000/300 also has a SCSI controller so I can boot 
NetBSD from the SCSI disks while I am writing the DSSI driver, however I've 
focussed initially on the SII chip (sort of a cut down SHAC) that is found 
on the MicroVAX 3400 since these are a lot easier to come by and I can 
reboot it at will.

>Anyhow, does anyone know where I can get the DSSI controller specs, so I 
>can write a driver for it? I'm very willing to do that, y'know... but a 
>AltaVista query on DSSI specs came up with nothing usable... does anything 
>know where I can get them?


The SHAC specs are in the KA670 Technical Manual (including addresses and 
programming) there are no "DSSI" docs that I can find so far (except for 
source code to DEC operating systems like Ultrix and VMS).

--Chuck