Testers with Alpha or DECstation hardware with framebuffers?

David Brownlee abs at absd.org
Sun Dec 5 12:28:19 CST 2021


I've been trying to fixup NetBSD to build usable X servers from up to
date Xorg for Alpha and MIPS based DECstations, and wondered if anyone
on list had any machines to hand on which they might be willing to
test?

There is a full distribution (individual set files and bootable ISO
image) in http://sync.absd.org/xwsfb/ - the README from that directory
is included below.

If anything is non obvious, or it would help to have test images in a
different format, just let me know

Thanks

David

xwsfb - v1.2

This contains wsfb Xorg builds for NetBSD/pmax and NetBSD/alpha from
2021-12-03 sources

Changes from stock NetBSD tree:
- Add WSDISPLAYIO_GET_FBINFO to dev/tc TURBOchannel display adaptors
- Enable building Xwsfb X server for pmax
- Switch alpha from Xorg 1.10 to 1.20 (plus tweaked bsd_ev56 from 1.10)
- (diffs in xwsfb.diff)

Things to test:
- Any and all framebuffers, TURBOchannel (and also PCI on alpha)
- Confirm if keyboard mapping is correct (and does console match x11)
- Does uxterm work on alpha

pmax issues:
- uxterm and LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 in general do not work
- Escape does not work on gxemul console (not a regression from stock)

To install and test pmax in gxemul
- Install gxemul :) - eg pkgsrc/emulators/gxemul
- Create a 2GB disk image: dd if=/dev/zero of=pmax.img bs=1m count=2048
- Run: gxemul -X -M 256 -e 3max -d pmax.img -d b:NetBSD-9.99.92-pmax.iso
- Follow prompts to install
- At the end - select 'Add a user' and make sure it is added to wheel
- Exit and halt
- Run: gxemul -X -M 256 -e 3max -d pmax.img (wait ~forever for fontcache)
- Login as root, edit /etc/X11/ctwm/system.ctwmrc and change "uxterm" to "xterm"
- Run: startx
- Optionally: (if user is in wheel group), enable xdm=YES in /etc/rc.conf

To upgrade an existing NetBSD-9.99.92 install
- Ensure you have the following from this location (where arch is alpha or pmax)
  - ${arch}/binary/kernel/netbsd-GENERIC.gz
  - ${arch}/binary/sets/xbase.tgz
  - ${arch}/binary/sets/xcomp.tgz
  - ${arch}/binary/sets/xetc.tgz
  - ${arch}/binary/sets/xfont.tgz
  - ${arch}/binary/sets/xserver.tgz
- Copy /netbsd to /onetbsd, then extract netbsd-GENERIC.gz as /netbsd
- Wipe /usr/X11R7 then extract x*tgz from /
- For pmax only: edit /etc/X11/ctwm/system.ctwmrc & change "uxterm" to "xterm"
- Run: startx
- Optionally: (if user is in wheel group), enable xdm=YES in /etc/rc.conf


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