At 10:04 PM 6/26/01 +0100, Matt London wrote:
>Hrm, maybe if we actually start making progress we should check with them
>- after all, how much could they bother about the design of a processor
>that's 20 years old, the family of which is no longer in production.

The VAX prints are copyrighted, and thus using them as the basis for your 
design is a violation of the copyright law. However, as a lot of people 
point out, Compaq isn't particularly worried about or care about hobbiests 
re-creating the VAX, they would no doubt not allow any of our work to be 
used commercially without paying them but hey this isn't a money making 
venture :-)

Finally, I would *LOVE* to see the press generated by Compaq trying to sue 
a group of people who love the VAX trying to keep it alive and Compaq 
trying to keep it dead :-) Frankly it would be worth it to do this for just 
that possibility!

On a more practical note, the FPGAs in question have lots of gates but not 
enough RAM to hold the WCS so that would have to be external. Second the 
MSCP protocol is pretty much a PITA if you have to implement it as well and 
I don't think you could fit the VAX and a MSCP processor and a Qbus or 
whatever into one chip (you might but it would be really tight). I suggest 
that the first step be a VAX that can access memory and has an accessible 
front panel to put simple programs into and run them. Concurrent with that 
a serial port at the correct locations so that you can boot the VAX 
monitor.  *THEN* you can think about real peripherals. You might find it 
easier to emulate the SGEC for Ethernet and perhaps the SII for a DSSI bus. 
Then again, the SII is a lot more complicated than it seems at first glance ...

--Chuck