On Thu, 28 Dec 2000, NetBSD Bob wrote:

> [...]
>
> I am really expecting the OldeTyme light dainteness and speed of
> the machines will drop to a crawl in 1.5, as did my MVII.
>
> IFF, for the sake of discussion, this kind of testing indicated that
> there really was a hurdle/bloat/crawl/whatever in the code, then, as
> Isildur suggested, and apparently some others thought might be of
> merit, perhaps a fork into a cast-in-stone end-of-the-line stable
> final (or whatever) lean/mean/trimmed-to-the-bone OT-NetBSD-VAX
> suite ought to be seriously considered.
>
> [...]

I think it's probably a bit too early to write-off 1.5 and future releases
for running on the older VAXen.  If we do notice some serious performance
problems on systems like the MicroVAX-II, we need to note what they are,
track down their source, and figure out possible solutions to them.

Given that 1.5 is a fairly significant release, I imagine we're going to
see some problems.  This is only to be expected, especially considering
the NetBSD/vax community contains systems which truly stretch the limits
of the OS, which is a `good thing.' I think it's healthy for NetBSD in
general to have to deal with crusty old MicroVAX-IIs and VAX 11/750s.

And from what I've seen of the NetBSD community over the past few years,
it isn't one to turn a blind eye to issues like these.  As long as we're
diligent about researching and reporting problems, they'll be solved as
best as they can.

If there are significant performance problems beyond the current rc.d
issues, then we need to work to understand them.  Getting NetBSD to run
well on the VAX platform is the main purpose of this mailing list
afterall.

-brian.
--- Brian Chase | bdc@world.std.com | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ -----
 "Captain, we're experiencing a high rate of packet collisions!" -- K.