Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: NETbsd on Amiga  (Read 17215 times)

Description:

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline johnklos

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Feb 2010
  • Posts: 190
    • Show all replies
Re: NETbsd on Amiga
« on: May 28, 2010, 04:54:45 AM »
NetBSD is very different than GNU/Linux when it comes to updates because the whole OS is the same version for all supported architectures. GNU/Linux, conversely,  has very few distros which support more than a few architectures, and even Debian has trouble keeping m68k up to date. That's not to say they're not working on it, but you can't install a modern Debian right now. People are working on the toolchain to get things up to date presently.

NetBSD's advantage is that the same source code tree is used for all architectures, so all of userland is exactly the same for amd64 as it is for m68k and VAX, for instance. The toolchain is the same version, all of the daemons are the same, et cetera. By not keeping them separate, all the architectures benefit, plus you know if your code runs cleanly on VAX, m68k, Alpha, SPARC, et cetera, then you know it's good, portable code.

NetBSD's pkgsrc is also architecture agnostic as much as it can. You'll never hear pkgsrc developers say something like, "m68k? Who uses that? We don't care about fixing that." I've heard that many other places, though, even though everyone should care about making their code as correct as they can. After all, there were tons of x86 developers who didn't care about correct code who had to go back and fix tons of things when they wanted their code to work on 64 bit x86. Some people never learn.

To summarize, NetBSD is up to date and well supported on Amiga.
 

Offline johnklos

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Feb 2010
  • Posts: 190
    • Show all replies
Re: NETbsd on Amiga
« Reply #1 on: May 28, 2010, 05:06:40 AM »
I didn't exactly answer your question - yes, I run NetBSD on two Amigas and I try to help keep things working properly. I try out different hardware whenever I get the chance. For example, I just got an IOblix multiport serial card and I'm trying to get everything working properly with that (and improve 16650 and 16950 support in NetBSD in general).

Next I hope to get a ZorRAM card or two to make sure that NetBSD is fine with larger amounts of memory...

Personally, I think NetBSD is excellent on Amiga hardware. People don't let it get overly bloated and too slow because we really do run it on old VAXen and m68030 Suns and Macs, for instance.
 

Offline johnklos

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Feb 2010
  • Posts: 190
    • Show all replies
Re: NETbsd on Amiga
« Reply #2 on: May 28, 2010, 08:20:59 AM »
Quote from: Gulliver;561530
While I agree NetBSD is great.
 I see it hasnt got support for many Amiga hardware expansions, in the form of drivers. That is the only thing IMHO NetBSD lacks. It just needs more hardware drivers.


Like what?
 

Offline johnklos

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Feb 2010
  • Posts: 190
    • Show all replies
Re: NETbsd on Amiga
« Reply #3 on: May 28, 2010, 08:25:50 AM »
Quote from: MelbourneBen;561548
Thanks for the responses guys.

Does NETBSD have a GUI that can be installed? Also, do you have your Amiga's setup to dual boot either Amiga dos or Netbsd?

:)

Yes, it comes with X Window System, which comes with twm. You can load any of a number of windowing systems if you like. Check out:

ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/wm/README.html

No, I don't dual boot those machines. They're colocated and are usually up for months at a time. I have another two Amigas for running AmigaDOS.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2010, 09:01:04 AM by johnklos »
 

Offline johnklos

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Feb 2010
  • Posts: 190
    • Show all replies
Re: NETbsd on Amiga
« Reply #4 on: May 28, 2010, 09:04:08 AM »
Quote from: bloodline;561553
Links please, I fancy firing NetBSD up in UAE.


Links for NetBSD? How about http://www.NetBSD.org/?

From the main site, look under Ports for the Amiga port. It's a little bit of work to get going, but you'll get plenty of help on the port-amiga mailing list.

I tried many times to get NetBSD to run under UAE, but never got it working properly. I don't know if UAE emulates the MMU well enough. I'd love to hear how if you succeed. I don't really know much about UAE, so maybe I'm just doing something wrong.
 

Offline johnklos

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Feb 2010
  • Posts: 190
    • Show all replies
Re: NETbsd on Amiga
« Reply #5 on: May 28, 2010, 09:06:19 AM »
Quote from: Daedalus;561555
@johnklos

It's years since I installed it but at the time it didn't support the Mediator PCI bus, which meant no PCI graphics cards or network cards...


It'd be nice to see PCI support for Amiga in NetBSD, especially since most of the PCI drivers compile for whatever architecture as-is. We'd need to get a Mediator or two to NetBSD developers...
 

Offline johnklos

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Join Date: Feb 2010
  • Posts: 190
    • Show all replies
Re: NETbsd on Amiga
« Reply #6 on: May 28, 2010, 06:34:32 PM »
Quote from: Gulliver;561569
Okay so I said not enough drivers for hardware. These are the ones that seem to be missing. Please do correct me if I made some mistake on any of them:

CPU (the PPC part):
-BlizzardPPC
-CyberstormPPC


These are working, for the most part, and the amigappc port is actively being improved.

Quote from: Gulliver;561569
IDE controller (all channels + full features):
-Idefix Express
-FastATA 1200
-FastATA 4000
-Eide99

I don't know which are which, but fixes based on the current IDE ports should work fine, and/or require an option in the kernel configuration file.


Quote from: Gulliver;561569
SCSI:
-BlizzardPPC 603+ (is it unsupported?)


This looks like it'd be straightforward to support since we already support the chip. I suppose we just never had anyone to test it. I assume you have one of these - would you be willing to test it for us?

Quote from: Gulliver;561569
Video Controllers:
-BlizzardVision
-CyberVisionPPC
-All pci based videocards


PCI isn't supported yet, as I mentioned earlier, but it'd certainly be nice. The CyberVisionPPC and BlizzardVision are supported, but probably need some testing.

Quote from: Gulliver;561569
Audio:
-Delfina


No idea on this one. If you have one, we can probably get some technical info on it and see about adapting a current driver to it.

Quote from: Gulliver;561569
Ethernet controllers:
-All PCI based ethernet cards


Again, PCI would be nice, but we'd need to get a Mediator or two to developers.

Quote from: Gulliver;561569
IO:
-Subway
-Deneb


Same as above - USB wouldn't be too hard because so many USB chips are already supported in NetBSD, but we'd have to get hardware to developers.

Quote from: Gulliver;561569
BUSBOARD:
-All mediator models
-All G-Rexx models
-All Prometheus models


Same as above.

How much of this hardware do you have, and how much testing would you be willing to do?

John