Vaxstation 4000 m60 and NetBSD

[David Brownlee]

On 2 January 2018 at 21:02, Maciej W. Rozycki via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 19 Dec 2017, Charles Dickman via cctalk wrote:
>
> > > Hardware support say no support for LCG Graphics :-(
> >
> > There are a few people willing to work on graphics for old
> > vaxstations, but there is no documentation.
> >
> > If anyone has documentation, the netbsd vax port mailing list would be
> > very interested.
>
>  The RAMDAC is standard, so as long as frame buffer memory is mapped into
> the CDAL address space writing a dumb device driver should be pretty
> straightforward with little reverse engineering effort.  And CDAL address
> decoding is I believe documented in the KA46 board specification.
>
>  And all else failing you can always resort to TURBOchannel graphics wired
> via a TURBOchannel adapter.  While not supported by the console monitor,
> it can be handled by the OS just fine, and several TURBOchannel graphics
> drivers are already available for other ports, so it's just a matter of a
> suitable kernel configuration (with minor patching possibly, depending on
> how cleanly written the respective drivers are).
>
>  I was able to get OS console output using at least the HX and one of the
> HX+ options with my m90 and the (still very crippled and long neglected)
> VAX/Linux port several years ago.  The MX, CX and TX options should be
> easily supportable too.  Only accelerators (PixelStamp and PixelVision
> architecture implementations) might cause trouble for one reason or
> another (such as using DMA or requiring a TURBOchannel extender, which are
> scarcer than hen's teeth).
>

I've been chatting to the NetBSD dev who wrote support for most of the
sparc framebuffers (up to and including accelerated antialiased font
console support where relevant), and if anyone has a spare VAXstation with
a framebuffer they would be willing to part with (*) he would be very
interested in writing driver support.

(*) I'm happy to pay a reasonable amount to help find a beloved charge a
caring new home involving active exercise with exciting new code :-p

David