Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 18:18:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeffrey Hsu <hsu> To: freebsd-alpha Subject: Re: future of slpha port Message-ID: <199806030118.SAA22587@hub.freebsd.org>
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> I think you might be referring to the work that Jeffrey Hsu and Terry > Lambert did porting NetBSD/Alpha to the AXPpci33 (a.k.a. noname). This > wasn't FreeBSD - they used the NetBSD/Alpha port done by Chris Demetriou. > The noname work was contributed by Jeffrey back to NetBSD and at least > partly re-written by Chris AFAIK. Yes, that was something I did on my own several years ago. I tried to get loaner equipment from the various Alpha and Alpha clone manufacturers for hardware to port to. Unfortunately, I got very little support on this from the outside hardware vendors and inside FreeBSD. I think the time wasn't right for FreeBSD to accept another architecture port. In any case, I got two loaner units, worked on the kernel port for two months, first getting NetBSD ported to that particular bus and platform. Among other things, an important result of that work was a crucial fix to the NetBSD/Alpha vm system which at that time wasn't setting the dirty bit on pages that had been swapped out, completely breaking virtual memory on all platforms, not just the one I was working on. I also hauled my units to a Linux Daze forum at DECUS in San Francisco, a room full of vendors (including DEC which was paying several engineers fulltime to work on the Linux alpha port) demoing Linux running on the Alpha platform. I was a lone voice in a room of Linux nuts, but I perserved until the manufacturer that lent me the two units requested the units back, at which time I had to stop working on the port. A darn shame too, as I had made great progress and was about to integrate the NetBSD pieces into FreeBSD. It just about broke my heart when this project ended. Jeffrey To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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