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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If you have a project you would like added to this page,
please use this form
Please try to provide all relevant information.
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:
- Rework the fd.c floppy driver to make the fdc and fd devices
seperate. This should make it easier and cleaner to add support
for floppy tape devices.
- Improve the lpt driver to make some sort of common base which
would make adding non-printer devices easier, like parallel port
ZIP drives.
- More and better sound drivers.
- More SCSI and CDROM drivers, like the SCSI and CDROM ports on
sound cards.
Hopefully of general interest:
- Better installation tools for the system.
- Better installation tools for `packages' like emacs, etc.
- Better startup scripts, designed to make adding and removing packages
simplier and automated.
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:
- a style guide for various types of documentation, giving a more
seamless look to the various faqs floating around.
- a comprehensive list of gotchas, especially for NetBSD-current
such as compiling the new gcc, which could have a pointer
from the mailing list subscribe acceptence message, if not
included in the message.
- more how-to guides, which new users could be pointed to
rather than the current practice of "just look at the
man page/source/whatever".
- and perhaps approaching the other *BSDs about collaboration
on such documentation.
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.