Re: low-end vaxen and unix - TUHS

30 Jan 1999

Ken Wellsch &lt;kcwellsc(a)math.uwaterloo.ca&gt; wrote:

...
  On a KA410 (VAXstation 2000 etc.) the MFM controller
and the NCR 5380
 both do DMA to a shared 16Kb private memory buffer.  You then have to
 pull your data out into the regular VAXen memory.  I believe the Lance
 chip (ethernet) is the only DMA to main memory capable device. 
Correct.

Michael Sokolov
TUHS 4BSD Coordinator
4.3BSD-* Maintainer
Quasijarus Project Principal Architect & Developer
Phone: 440-449-0299 or 216-217-2579
ARPA Internet SMTP mail: mxs46(a)k2.scl.cwru.edu
TUHS WWW page: http://minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au/TUHS/
Quasijarus WWW page: http://minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au/Quasijarus/

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...
 From Alan F R Bain &lt;A.F.R.Bain(a)dpmms.cam.ac.uk&gt;
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To: pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au
Subject: Re: low-end vaxen and unix 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 29 Jan 1999 17:49:42 EST."
             &lt;199901292249.RAA04815(a)skybridge.scl.cwru.edu&gt; 
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 22:54:33 +0000
From: Alan F R Bain &lt;A.F.R.Bain(a)dpmms.cam.ac.uk&gt;
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Michael Sokolov wrote:
...
 A warning for naive list readers. NetBSD's
definition of "runs on" means that
you have to part with all of your mass storage devices and use the bare CPU as
diskless peering-at toy. 
I think this is being grossly unfair and irrelevant; the information
provided was that NetBSD was a viable alternative which is correct.
All my modern machines run NetBSD and the only non supported hardware
is a 9 track magtape drive on a sun -- I don't consider that 
unreasonable as it's rather an unusal model.  I don't think PUPS
is the place for OS favouritism arguments, so please desist.

...
 4.3BSD-Quasijarus will eventually run on nearly every
VAX ever made? When will
this happen? To speed it up, subscribe to the Quasijarus mailing list and join
our team.

  It will also run 4.3BSD
 binaries -- in fact, in my experience, more of them than Ultrix will.  I
 ran Ultrix on a 3100 on my desk when I worked at DEC, and it was even odds
 whether binaries I'd built on 4.3 would work correctly -- remember, Ultrix
 branched from 4.2, not 4.3. 
The fact that Ultrix originally started from 4.2 is absolutely irrelevant,
since when 4.3BSD came out, Ultrix fully caught up with it. As the principal
maintainer and software architect of 4.3BSD-*, I know this better than anyone
else, and I state authoritatively that the complete 4.3BSD-Quasijarus userland 
I don't feel that there is any need to be silly and pretentious
here; techinical arguments may be of interest, but `I'm right and
I know I am' arguments are just childish.

To add a constructive comment, there's been a lot written about the
history and tree of development of early unix up to the SYSV
and BSD split occured, but I'm pretty unsure about the rest.
It seems that BSD2 and BSD4 developed pretty much in parallel,
the former targetting the PDP and the latter the VAX;  Warren's
graphing data provide an interesting view of what happened,
but I'm unsure how closely related the two developments were
(especially in time of releases, introduction of new features
etc.).  I'd be grateful if someone more knowledgable could fill
in some of the details.

Alan Bain

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