NetBSD/pmax

NetBSD/pmax is the port of NetBSD to MIPS-based DECstations and DECsystems.
NetBSD/pmax evolved from the 4.4BSD pmax port. 4.4bsd/pmax was in large part the work of Ralph Campbell and Rick Macklem (rick@snowhite.uoguelph.ca)
Adam Glass took the pmax portions of 4.4bsd-Lite and incorporated it it into the NetBSD tree. Jonathan Stone and Ted Lemon have contributed to it since then.

There was no pmax port in NetBSD 1.0. Since then, many of the idiosyncracies of the 4.4bsd/pmax kernel have been replaced with the standard NetBSD equivalents. The NetBSD/pmax kernel sources are being integrated into the NetBSD-current source tree.

Jonathan Stone has done about as much on NetBSD/pmax as anyone. He sheperded the NetBSD/pmax 1.1 release, and is currently the official portmaster.
Arne Juul has done sterling work, creating a NetBSD/pmax configuration for GNU binutils and GCC. These are now the `official' compiler toolchain used for NetBSD/pmax. Arne also built alpha-release pmax binaries for NetBSD 1.1.
Ted Lemon was the official port-master and maintainer of NetBSD/pmax until January 1996, though recently he hasn't had much time to spend on NetBSD.


Supported Hardware

Supported systems

NetBSD/pmax runs on the following models of Decstation: The 5000/1xx and 5000/2x models (3MIN and MAXINE) can be upgraded to a 5000/150 or 5000/50 by replacing the r3000 CPU daughterboard with a 50MHz r4000 CPU. The 5000/240 can be upgraded to a 5000/260 with a 60MHz r4400 CPU daughterboard. NetBSD/pmax does not currently support any r4000 or r4400 daughterboards, though at least one port to an (non-DECstation) r4000 system is underway.

NetBSD/pmax has no support for the Decstation 5100 or the Decsystem 5400. The 5100 (MIPSMATE) is supposedly similar enough to the 3100 that a port should be feasible. The 5400 (MIPSFAIR) is supposedly more similar to the MAYFAIR Vaxes. If NetBSD/vax is ever ported to 3900-series vaxes, a port to the 5400 should be trivial.

A port to the multiprocessor Decsystem 5800 is unlikely to ever happen.

Supported Devices

Hardware devices include the cfb, sfb, mfb, and pm TurboChannel framebuffers; TurboChannel Ethernet cards; and all baseboard devices of the supported models, with the exception of the MAXINE floppy-disk controller, ISDN/sound chip, and 1MHz free-running clock.

The undocumented 25MHz bus-cycle counter is supported as a high-resolution clock on the 3MAXPLUS. This time source is also used by the in-kernel NTP support.

Installation Guide

NetBSD/pmax has an installation guide under construction. While incomplete, it's better than nothing.

Projects

A list of things we'd like to see done for NetBSD/pmax, or for NetBSD on other mips systems. It includes pointers to resources, and to people who've expressed interest in some of the projects.

Frequently-Asked Questions

A FAQ page, with a selection of frequently-asked questions and our answers, is available.
[MAILING LISTS] There are mailing lists associated with the pmax port.
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Copyright (c) 1996 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.