Anders Magnusson wrote:
> 
> Thanks, but I don't need the machines; I already have a /400 to play
> with :-) (and /500, /300 and /200 :-) I hope to get someone to help
> me out with writing the support...
> 
> -- Ragge

O.K. I guess I'm in. Provided that I can get my "new" VAX up and running
under something -- I'm shooting for Ultrix (fingers crossed) -- I will 
stick my nose into XMI, VAXBI or whatever support is needed. At least I
have as much kernel hacking experience as having done one device driver 
(for the i386 architecture ...) in the past. Also, I might get my hands
on some sort of documentation that may make writing support easier. 
Finally, my family will be gone to Germany for about two months, which
gives me many evenings and weekends for quiet work...

I would like to know about the status of the porting efforts though and
where to focus on. As I understand even to access the TK70 tape we would
need support for the XMI bus, the XMI to VAXBI adapter card chain, the
VAXBI bus and (whatever the link to the TK70 tape drive is). This is a 
fair amount of uphill battle :-(. The path to disk access may be shorter
but it is also more diverse: XMI->DSSI or XMI->VAXBI->SDI or through the
CI on to the HSC. This is scary.

It might be good to know which VAX 6000 hardware we all share so that we 
can focus work on these pieces that benefit everyone most to get us pulled 
out of the mud.

Tomorrow I will try to compile a complete inventory of the VAX 
hardware that I am going to rescue out of my place (I have signed up 
with them to rescue everything by default.) 

Also, my stuff is from a cluster, so it's got no disks. Which ones 
should I try focussing on in my hunting? DSSI, SDI, or SCSI? Right 
now I'm trying on all fronts. I would have loved SCSI, but seems like 
DSSI looks more likely and more affordable. SDI's main problem is 
shipping :-)

Finally, let me know which books I should stick my nose into. I am
pretty blank on the VAX architecture in general, and XMI and VAXBI
DSSI, SDI etc. in particular. Where can I learn the basics?

Do you recommend me to work off a running VMS system or Ultrix? (I'm
shooting for Ultrix).

Does NetBSD support the multiple processors in an SMP fashion at all 
or only one? What is NetBSD's take on the VAX architecture? (I'm not
asking you to explain to me, just to let me know what I should not
miss out to read.)

Thank you,
-Gunther