version of the system for 68030 cards

version of the system for 68030 cards

[forsyth]

a student here, Dave Stringer-Calvert, attempted to port the system to a Sun-3/80.
he got most of the way through, but foundered on a lack of information from Sun
about the way the Lance and DVMA interacted.
i've now revised and completed the work to make a port of the Plan 9 cpu/terminal kernel
to a 68030 VME system, the Eltec Eurocom 6.  we inherited
quite a few of those cards, and we've now got some student projects using them under Plan 9.

if anyone else has some Eltec 6 cards and is interested, let me know.
the only bit still causing trouble is the wd33c93a scsi interface,
where there seems to be some Eltec-specific subtlety. sometimes
it works, but often it doesn't.  (i currently think they botched
the interaction between DBA and single-byte mode.)  the system runs
happily over the net from our file server, using the local bus Lance card.
i have a replacement boot PROM for the card that will boot a kernel using
BOOTP and TFTP.  i've also got reasonable drivers for the 8536 CIO that controls the parallel ports,
and for a VIP-1024 VME frame grabber, which were needed for a project.
the frame grabber provides both a file interface in '#v' and a segattach interface
(doing the latter was fiddly, but i don't think it's my fault -- the mapping
interface looks incomplete).

i haven't done a 68k Alef port yet, but i'm thinking about it, because
i'm fed up with not having it!

i intend to port any new release of Plan 9 to the Eltec environment.

version of the system for 68030 cards

[Greg]

> A student here, Dave Stringer-Calvert, attempted to port the system to a 
> Sun-3/80.
> 
> He got most of the way through, but foundered on a lack of information from
> Sun about the way the Lance and DVMA interacted.

It is a well-known fact (well known to Rob, anyway  (-: ) that Sun, the
so-called "Open Systems" company, is about as open as my anal orifice when it
comes to details about their hardware.  I mean, the nerve of some people,
trying to run a different O/S on the hardware they bought!  The funny thing
is that the PC, from that most noted of "Open Systems" companies IBM, ended
up becoming the most open platform there is.

(I'm allowed to say this, I worked for Sun for almost 5 years  (-: )

Anyway, you might try pointing your student to the NetBSD/Sun-3 port, since
it contains

/usr/src/sys/arch/sun3/dev/if_le.c
/usr/src/sys/arch/sun3/dev/if_le.h
/usr/src/sys/arch/sun3/dev/if_lereg.h
/usr/src/sys/arch/sun3/dev/if_le_subr.c
/usr/src/sys/arch/sun3/dev/if_le_subr.h

Tell him to go grovelling around on ftp.NetBSD.ORG and eventually he will
stumble across these ...

	- Greg