NetBSD Projects Page

NetBSD has projects, both small and large, which many people do not know exist. Some of these would accept more programmers, testers, and such. Others are more or less closed, but it would be nice to know they existed regardless.

This page was created to provide information on what projects exist, what should exist, and where more information about them can be found. Consider this an advertising area for testers, programmers, and comments.

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Projects in Progress


Title: Loadable Modules for System Components
ID: 2
Date: 11-Jan-1996
OS: NetBSD-current
Arch: All
Contact: Michael Graff <explorer@flame.org>
Status: In post 1.2 tree

More loadable modules are needed. Adding kernfs to the filesystem shouldn't require a kernel recompile. That's old technology. Some filesystem modules (kernfs, cd9660, msdosfs, etc) load cleanly now. Devices are harder but certainly not impossible.
Title: Qlogic's Fast!SCSI PCMCIA driver
ID: 4
Date: 11-Jan-1996
OS: NetBSD-current
Arch: i386
Contact: Eric S. Hvozda <hvozda@netcom.com>
Status: In progress

I'm currently attempting a driver for Qlogic's Fast!SCSI PCMCIA card. This driver will be usable with Stefan Grefan's PCMCIA subsystem. I've been working on this for a while now, but things are looking up with the esp driver in the sparc and alpha ports. My work is for the i386 port.
Title: Aria-based Sound Driver
ID: 5
Date: 13-Jan-1996
OS: NetBSD-current
Arch: i386
Contact: Roland C Dowdeswell <roland@imrryr.org>
URL: http://www.imrryr.org/NetBSD/hacks/aria/
FTP: ftp://ftp.imrryr.org/pub/NetBSD/aria/
Status: In Progress, partly working.

Working to get the full functionality of aria-based sound cards. They will emulate a SB, but only a SB -- so no stereo, 16bit, etc. Driven natively I have got 16 bit stereo sounds, and am working on making it a lot cleaner, improving what I have for the mixer interface, getting the full duplex aspects of the card working, etc.
Title: ATAPI subsystem and ATAPI CDROM driver
ID: 6
Date: 13-Jan-1996
OS: NetBSD-1.1
Arch: i386
Contact: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@ensta.fr>
FTP: ftp://lix.polytechnique.fr/pub/manu/atapi.tar.gz
Status: In progress

After a rework of the wd/wdc drivers (wd.c has been split into wd.c for for "high level" IDE drive operations, and wdc.c which manages the IDE and ATAPI commands) to set up a per-controller command queue, and ATAPI subsystem has been written, which provides basic functions to probe/attach an ATAPI device and send ATAPI commands. This subsystem is not i386 specific and can be used by other architectures. There is also a CDROM driver using this.
Title: MS Macro System GmbH "DraCo" machine / Motorola 68060 CPU port
ID: 7
Date: 23-Jan-1996
OS: NetBSD-1.1
Arch: Amiga
Contact: Ignatios Souvatzis <is@beverly.rhein.de>
URL: http://comma.rhein.de/~is/projects/NetBSD-DraCo-M68060.html
Status: end-alpha (multiuser mode works mostly)

The Macro System GmbH "DraCo" has a patched AmigaOS as its native OS. It comes in MC68060 and MC68040V variants. It has little native Amiga hardware, but a Zorro II bus (w/o DMA capability) is included. Mainboard SCSI (NCR 53C710) and a Retina BLT ZIII- lookalike on a fast local bus are included.

The strategy for the port is to handle it like a strange Amiga. Mainboard device drivers will test for the presence of DraCo vs. Amiga local bus devices look to the AmigaOS, therefore to our bootloader and the kernel, like Zorro III devices on the Amiga.


Title: DOSemu port/VM86 changes
ID: 10
Date: 08-Feb-1996
OS: NetBSD-1.1
Arch: i386
Contact: John Kohl <jtk@kolvir.arlington.ma.us>
FTP: ftp://sipb.mit.edu/pub/netbsd/dosemu/
Status: mostly working

DOSemu support for NetBSD is working well enough for me to run my financial package. quicken for dos runs too.

Some kernel VM86 support is in -current, I need to look at that stuff and re-spin a patchkit based on it.

For the moment, pick up the kit mentioned at the FTP site above and apply it to a NetBSD-1.1 kernel tree.


Title: Name Service Switch - nsswitch
ID: 11
Date: 07-Mar-1996
OS: NetBSD-current
Contact: Luke Mewburn <lm@werj.com.au>
FTP: ftp://netbsd.rmit.edu.au/pub/werj/nsswitch/
Status: beta

An implementation of nsswitch.conf for NetBSD, as a set of patches to libc. The routines dynamically parse the configuration file as necessary, and a '.db' file can be generated by any process with privileges to reduce the parsing overhead.
Title: Kernel Documentation
ID: 12
Date: 21-Mar-1996
OS: NetBSD-current
Arch: All
Contact: Perry Metzger <perry@piermont.com>
Status: In progress. Help solicited.

We have added a new section to the NetBSD manual. The new "Section 9" documents kernel internals. Manual pages documenting the structure of the kernel, common kernel functions and macros, autoconfiguration, etc. are solicited. The more kernel man pages we have, the easier it becomes for people to help working on various kernel related projects. To see how far along we are, just look at the section 9 in the -current source tree.
Title: new aic7xxx (AHA-[23][789]x) driver
ID: 13
Date: 24-Mar-1996
OS: NetBSD-current
Arch: i386
Contact: Pete Bentley, Noriyuki Soda <pete@demon.net> <soda@sra.co.jp>
FTP: ftp://ftp.sra.co.jp/pub/os/NetBSD/misc/i386/aic7xxx/
Status: beta

porting of FreeBSD-current version of aic7xxx driver.

Second SCSI bus handling method is changed from NetBSD-1.1, but it is not tested, yet. If you have such card, please try and send report to <soda@sra.co.jp>


Title: Hints on how to get -current from releases
ID: 14
Date: 09-Apr-1996
OS: NetBSD
Contact: Martin Cracauer <cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de>
URL: http://www.bik-gmbh.de/~cracauer/bsd-to-current.html
Status: First document exists, more hints wanted.

I collected a number of hints on how to compile -current sources on release systems on
http://www.bik-gmbh.de/~cracauer/bsd-to-current.html

Simliar work has been posted to the -current mailing list by Alistair G. Crooks over the last year, but not since 1.1 Release.

I would appreciate any help in keeping this document up-to-date, since I may fall behind -current when I am busy and I do not have Release systems to try updates on a regualar basis.

For now, this document is not an exact description, but rather tries to explain the problems somewhat, so that the user may get around problems by him/herself next time. I am happy to discuss better forms to help users.


Title: Sound Blaster 16 Driver
ID: 15
Date: 1-Jul-1996
OS: NetBSD 1.2
Arch: i386
Contact: Mark Willey <willey@ecn.purdue.edu>
URL: http://purcell.ecn.purdue.edu/~willey/projects/sb16
Status: In Progress

The goal is to produce a driver that has full mixer support and is full-duplex. Volunteer code writers, testers, and interested parties are invited to help out.
Title: SCSI Driver for Amiga DKB Cobra/Mongoose Accelerator with Ferret SCSI Adaptor
ID: 16
Date: 26-Jul-1996
OS: NetBSD
Arch: Amiga
Contact: Ignatios Souvlakis, Mark C. Langston <ignatios@beverly.rhein.de> <fugue@ccp.spc.uchicago.edu>
Status: in progress

Ignatios is currently coding an initial SCSI driver for the DKB Cobra/Mongoose Amiga accelerator with the Ferret SCSI expansion.

Mark is testing the driver for Ignatios, since Ignatios does not have the above card. Once the driver is stable enough to support development from within the new kernel (or as soon as Mark scrapes up enough cash to buy a new 2.5" IDE drive), Mark will be assisting more directly in the development of the driver.

Right now, the driver is capable of recognizing the SCSI drive, and reading its geometry. However, as of 7/26/96, the kernel hangs after being told where the root device is for an install.

The Ferret uses a 40MHz FAS246 chip, which is almost identical to the FAS216, which is why Ignatios is working on this.


Title: IBM PS/2 and MCA Bus Support
ID: 17
Date: 11-Sep-1996
OS: NetBSD
Arch: i386
Contact: Scott Telford <s.telford@ed.ac.uk>
URL: http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/~st/netbsd-mca.html
FTP: ftp://ftp.epcc.ed.ac.uk/pub/st/netbsd/
Status: In progress (initial release available)

Preliminary and unoffical patches and drivers for NetBSD/i386 1.1pl1 kernel to support IBM PS/2 systems with MCA (MicroChannel) buses.

Drivers for the on-board MCA ESDI disk controller and 3Com 3C523 Ethernet drivers are in progress. The ISA "aha" driver is reported to almost work with the AHA-1640 card. Some problems with ISA "fd" driver at present.


Title: Boot ROMs and related tools
ID: 18
Date: 02-Oct-1996
OS: NetBSD-1.2
Arch: i386
Contact: Matthias Drochner <drochner@zelux6.zel.kfa-juelich.de>
FTP: ftp://zelof1.zel.kfa-juelich.de/pub/NetBSD/bootcode
Status: working

Based on sys/lib/libsa, boot ROMs for different network interfaces (currently 3c509, WD80x3 and PCNET-PCI, more drivers are welcome) are made. The code can alternatively be started as DOS program or can be installed as boot sector on hd / fd. Access to UFS partitions and to the DOS filesystem (if started from DOS) is possible.

Projects which should happen

While this may be somewhat biased to the i386 ports, some of this could be useful for other ports.
port-i386 biased list: Hopefully of general interest:
These are from Andrew Carey <careya@peak.org>:

I'd suggest adding to the todo list standardized documentation. I don't really have time to work on it now (and I'm not sure when I would be able to), but hopefully it might motivate someone to take it on.

I see something along the lines of:


www@NetBSD.ORG
$NetBSD: index.html,v 1.16 1996/10/03 20:24:34 explorer Exp $
Copyright (c) 1996 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.