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From: jkh@meepmeep.pcs.com (Jordan K. Hubbard)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.nsc.32k
Subject: various unresolved issues.
Message-ID: <9005071615.AA02112@meepmeep.pcs.com>
Date: 7 May 90 15:59:03 GMT
Sender: news@daver.bungi.com
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Approved: news@daver.bungi.com


I was feeling especially masochistic this weekend and decided to
re-read the entire pc532 mailing list archive. It's amazing how
many questions I've posted to this group that had already been
answered somewhere in the mists of time. Sigh. It's a pity that the "FM"
is almost 3 megabytes now or I'd have been more willing to RTFM (but that's
still no excuse, I guess).

Anyway, that's all off the subject. After reading all those messages, I
started wondering about a number of issues that seemed to have slipped
between the cracks:

*** On the hardware front: ***

Ken S. was talking about a DSP board, whatever became of that?

Is anyone working on, or planning to work on, a decent intelligent frame
buffer card? This seems like it would be a mondo priority. Given that
I'm a software type, I'm in the position of having to plead and whine
for this stuff and hope that some hardware jock gets irritated enough
to knock something out just to shut me up :-). Still, give me the hardware,
I'll give you an R4 server.

What's the story on the eth532 card? I've seen one message saying that
it supports only thin ethernet and another saying that it supports both
thin-and-thick. What's the truth, here? G&D: Have you guys done a
complete parts cost estimate yet? I want one.

*** On the software front: ***

How's Minix coming along? I can't help but (humorously) remember
a certain quote from Bruce in <8912081857.AA01037@hplwbc.HPL.HP.COM>
on Fri, 8 Dec 89 10:57:10 pst:

>I would guess that a one weekend effort would get Minix running on the
>pc-532.

Ah, the simple naivete of youth! :-) (just kidding Bruce, really!)


I really think it's time that we starting thinking in a more "consortium"
like fashion on the Unix front. I realize that many of us have different
goals and ideas about which Unix would be "best", but there's still
a whole lot of common work that can be shared and ideas that can be exchanged.
I, for example, am working on porting 4.3 and am currently going through
the painful first steps of getting stand-alone versions of mkfs/fsck and
friends working as I proceed towards getting a root file system w/simple
stand-alone kernel booted up. This will naturally be the first step for
many others as well, regardless of the unix in question. The same commonality
will occur with the MMU code, scsi device and terminal drivers, etc etc.
If we can manage to stay in close communication (probably via private
mailing lists to avoid lots of nitty-specific issues from clogging this
list), we can arrange things so as to minimize wheel re-inventing wherever
possible. I have already attempted something along these lines with the
libso/libc libs I posted recently, though they are certainly no more than a
rough start. Lest I be accused of being all talk and no action, I'm willing to
set up and coordinate all this myself if no one else steps forward. We
(software developers) really have quite a massive amount of work ahead of
us and could reap significant benefits from each others work, if only
someone would take the time to properly coordinate it (having everyone
think more in terms of writing "building blocks" rather than quick
just-make-it-work hacks would also be a major boon). Are 90% of us just
sitting around staring owlishly at our boards, or what? Some of us have
had working boards for months and I have yet to see even one program to
pong the friggin' lights back and forth! That is a disgrace! :-)

					Jordan