> Hello again from Gregg C Levine
> I know this sounds like a darned strange one coming from anyone, even
> me... But here goes. Brian Chase's website, and the VAX Archive site,
> all refer to the Linux-VAX project, and provide hyperlinks to it. The
> developers, there,  managed to create a rootfs or root file system for
> it, and an early effort at creating cross compilation tools. And have
> created an impressive store of CVS stored objects that is files, and
> such like. 
> 
> However, that's as far as it looks they have gotten, on the surface.
> Do any of you; have any idea what happened regarding their efforts to
> continue the project? I am reluctant to post a subscription message to
> their lists, because I am not sure how active it is.

Right now Dave Airlie and myself are actively working on it.
I'm working on catching up with Linus' 2.5 development, at which
time we might try and get the port added to the official sources.

Once I get up-to-date, I'll probably go back working on drivers
for the hardware that I've got (KA650-, KA42- and KA46-based
machines).

Dave is working on toolchain stuff at the moment.  He's working
with the more stable 2.4 kernel which supports:

   LANCE ethernet (KA42/43/46)
   5380 SCSI
   SGEC ethernet (maybe - I think this is work-in-progress)
   DZ11 serial ports
   DELQA ethernet

> Also they chose to base their root file system's kernel on the KA43
> CPU, and associated peripherals. 

You don't need to use that kernel for booting.  You can MOP-boot
a different kernel which then mounts the root fs.

> My problem is that Bob Soupnik chose
> to base his VAX simulator on the 655 CPU. And again, associated
> peripherals. Do any of you know if a kernel that was written for one
> machine will work on the other?

I don't think a "generic" kernel will work properly right now.
But Dave is working solely with SIMH right now, so I'm sure he
can probably give you a binary kernel for SIMH, if you don't
want to compile a toolchain and kernel yourself.

> Next up, what about using the MOP protocol to do the booting? Those
> kernels were created with that in mind, it seems. Any suggestions for

Yes.  The output from our kernel compile is a vmlinux.SYS that can
be MOP-booted, and a vmlinux.dsk that can be dd-ed to the start of
a disk and disk booted.  Either kernel can then NFS-mount a root fs
or mount a local SCSI disk (on VS3100-class machines anyway - maybe
VS4000/60 too - can't remember).

There is also a simple bootloader (asbl - Andy's {Simple|SCSI|Stupid}
Boot Loader) that can pull a kernel from within a filesystem on 
a disk that the VAX firmware supports (uses console calls to read
the kernel, so in theory, could pull a kernel from an RA disk 
through a KDA50, for example - but the kernel itself won't be able
to access the disk afterwards).

> setting up SIMH to do that? I've got the vaguest notion of doing so,
> and I do not even know where to begin. 

Dave?

Later,
Kenn