32V update (was Re: [TUHS] While on the subject of 32V ...)

[Pat Villani]

Silly lawyers :-)  I know I'm good, but building in all the HP-UX 
features in a few months?  Not that good (or modest for that matter).

Hm, 32V-x86 huh?  Maybe, but I'd like to make it fairly portable and 
have a number of targets built from the same source tree.  I don't know 
if that will ever happen, but I don't want to design it out either by 
name or file partitioning.  Maybe we can address the project name at a 
later date.

I'll keep the VAX port alive throughout the project by making sure I can 
cross compile a clean VAX kernel at every milestone.  There may still be 
a VAX in the building somewhere.  Even if one was around, I won't be 
testing the VAX port thanks to HP legal.  We're now cleaning house of 
alpha systems, so a VAX is almost impossible to locate.  Darn mergers 
keeps wiping them out, like that asteroid and dinosaurs years ago ;-)

Progress: I'm working on the make file.  I'm trying to get a clean build 
by substituting stubs for the VAX code I ripped out.  Once done, I can 
concentrate on x86 equivalents.

Device drivers: I have keyboard and character cell VGA code I can use. 
I had been planning on adapting the Hale Landis ATA code from 
http://www.ata-atapi.com/, and the Thix floppy driver from 
http://www.hulubei.net/tudor/thix/ is probably a good piece of code to 
model the 32V driver on.

Pat

Wesley Parish wrote:

> It's downloaded.
> 
> I would suggest renaming it to something like 32V-x86, though - makes it 
> easier to remember it's not going to be precisely the same as 32V for VAX.
> 
> In relation to corporate caveats, the only way you could actually compete with 
> HP is if somehow, in a matter of months, you redid the entire development of 
> BSD and SVRx, up to the stage HP-UX currently is at.
> 
> Oh well, time for me to brush off my Pajari book on Unix device drivers and 
> see if I can make the grade! ;)
> 
> Wesley Parish