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1993-09-10
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Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: markus@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Markus Illenseer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Amiga NetBSD
Followup-To: comp.unix.amiga
Date: 10 Sep 1993 21:49:19 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 523
Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <26qsov$fbb@menudo.uh.edu>
Reply-To: markus@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Markus Illenseer)
NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Keywords: Unix, MMU, RAM, networking, freeware
PRODUCT NAME
Amiga NetBSD, kernel version #635
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
Amiga NetBSD is a freely distributable Unix (R) environment for Amiga
computers.
AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION
Name: The Regents of the University of California, Berkeley
and many contributors.
Amiga port by Markus Wild of Zurich, Switzerland, with major
contributions from Bryan Ford and Mike 'mykes' Schwartz.
LIST PRICE (approximate)
Freely distributable under the NetBSD disclaimer; see the COPYRIGHT
NOTICE section, below.
SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
NetBSD is still under construction, so the following information may
change.
SYSTEM HARDWARE
An accelerated Amiga (68030) with a working MMU (memory
management unit). This includes most accelerator boards
(e.g., Commodore A2630), the Amiga 3000, and others. NetBSD
does NOT currently support the 68040 processor; the MMU code
needs to be enhanced first. NetBSD is untested on the 68020.
The stock A4000/030 and A1200 computers have no MMU and so
will not run NetBSD.
Requires at least 2 MB of contiguous RAM.
8 MB or more of contiguous 32-bit RAM is recommended.
Requires at least 10 MB hard drive space for a minimal setup.
100 MB hard drive space needed for a full installation.
Actual use of NetBSD may require much more space; for
example, a serious developer may need 500 MB or more.
HARD DRIVE SUBSYSTEM
Amiga NetBSD supports the following hard-drive systems:
Amiga 3000 and 3000T internal SCSI host adapter.
A2091 SCSI host adapter for A2000.
GVP Series II SCSI host adapter for A2000 and A500.
Currently NOT supported:
Any PIO adapter such as Oktagon and ALF.
Any IDE adapter such as in the A4000.
Almost every SCSI hard drive is known to work with Amiga
NetBSD. This includes the range of Quantum drives, Seagate,
Wren, DEC, Fujitsu and IBM.
SCSI tape drives (QIC, DAT) and SCSI CD-ROM drives (ISO and
Rockridge extension) are supported.
GRAPHICS
Standard Amiga ECS chip set.
Retina Graphics Board.
SOFTWARE
The loader works with almost any version of AmigaDOS.
MACHINE USED FOR TESTING
Amiga 2000 with A2630 accelerator board
4 MB of 32-bit RAM, 4 MB of 16-bit RAM
Commodore A2091 SCSI adapter with Quantum P80S and Syquest 40MB
It was also tested with 1 and 2 MB Chip RAM on this A2000.
Amiga 3000 with 2 MB Chip RAM, 8 MB Fast RAM
Fujitsu M2623F (400MB) and a DEC DSP 3105S (1GB) SCSI drive.
On both Amigas, AmigaDOS 2.04 and Kickstart 37.175 was used.
On both Amigas, the Amiga NetBSD kernel #635 was used.
For some further tests, a A2065 Ethernet board was used.
INTRODUCTION
["TTY-fighters attacking!" Con Solo shouted.]
For your own interest: I may use technical words which are very
common in Unix environments but meaningless to people who have never used
such a system. Amiga NetBSD may help you to enter the world of Unix, but
you will need third party help, such as Unix reference books and guidelines.
Amiga NetBSD is the first freely distributable Unix for Amiga
systems, and enables the user to run a fully qualified Unix environment on
his own machine.
NetBSD takes over the Amiga, so it is not possible to run it
concurrently with AmigaDOS. So in this review, you will see references to
the "Amiga side" and the "NetBSD side" to indicate which operating system
(UNIX or AmigaDOS) must be running to accomplish a particular task.
HISTORY OF AMIGA NETBSD (technical)
NetBSD is based on the last public release of BSD 4.3 (the
networking-2 release) by the University of Berkeley, as well as integrating
some ideas from 386BSD. The Amiga port is largely based on the initial HP300
code distributed with 4.3BSD-NET2, and has become part of the official
NetBSD source tree. Further NetBSD ports in the line will include support
for Mac, Sun3 and Sparc.
This port was done by Markus Wild in June 1993, and is based upon the
original HP port. As Markus Wild has a great deal of knowledge of Unix
systems, his first efforts were to compile the basic tools needed for the
Unix environment. This was done on the AmigaDOS side with GCC 2.4.3, which
he ported himself to AmigaDOS some time ago. His famous ixemul.library
finally found a successor.
After doing the initial port of the kernel (the basic operating
system of Unix environments), the next problems were the basic root
filesystem and hard drive support. Here, Markus was aided by the Amiga Mach
port, worked on by many other people, which had a working SCSI driver but no
freely distributable Unix server.
All in all, this was a lucky constellation, and Amiga NetBSD was
ported in less than a month!
Having compiled the entire root filesystem, followed soon by an easy
port of GCC 2.4.5 was very easy, the kernel could then be compiled under
NetBSD itself, along with the rest of the environment. Amiga NetBSD has been
published and distributed over the Internet to interested developers and
supporters. A mailing-list was created, and bugs, features and wishes have
been discussed. Amiga NetBSD has a living future.
OVERVIEW
You may wonder why a Unix environment is needed for the Amiga.
Well, this is a serious question, but there is no real answer. The users and
developers of Amiga NetBSD have various uses for it: interest in doing the
port, use of Unix programs at home, easy support and easy access to
University resources, etc. They share their love of pure Unix environments.
Currently, Amiga NetBSD takes over the Amiga, so it is not possible
to run AmigaDOS programs under NetBSD using all the resources of Intuition
and Exec. This may change.
It is possible to mount Unix File System (UFS) partitions on the
AmigaDOS side, but currently they must be read-only. This helps you to copy
files from NetBSD to AmigaDOS. It is a future goal to be able to mount
AmigaDOS filesystems on the NetBSD side. This would allow the two sides to
share common resources (i.e., TeX fonts, compiler include files, and much
more).
Amiga NetBSD is a true multitasking and multiuser operating system
and allows system sharing in an intelligent way. Running in conjunction with
existing Unix environments (i.e., at a university), it is possible to
connect the Amiga running NetBSD to networks via Ethernet and PPP using a
true TCP/IP stack protocol.
The friends of the X11 windowing systems have yet to wait. X11 is
far from being ported to Amiga NetBSD. First, shared libraries have to be
ported, to make X11 usable and reliable in disk space and memory wasting.
Hopefully, the shared libraries will be ported from a public domain
implementation for shared libraries for Sun3 systems. X11 on Amiga NetBSD
will require a third party graphics board such as the Retina or Picasso II,
but a monochrome version would be feasible for the standard Amiga display.
It is almost impossible to run full color X11 on Amiga ECS or AGA at a usable
speed.
Amiga NetBSD is not binary compatible with any other UNIX system
yet. Future NetBSD versions will support various third-party binaries
though, such as SunOS, HP-UX and possibly Amiga Unix executables.
Supported drivers are:
o SCSI for hard-drives, QIC tapes, CD-ROM, and DAT tapes.
o ECS console driver with overscan resolution (VT200).
o Retina console driver with different resolutions (VT200).
o ASCII keyboard (qwerty) driver, possible to load localized
keyboards.
o Mouse with up to 3 buttons (no real use yet).
o Joysticks with up to 3 buttons (no real use yet).
o Internal serial port up to 38400 baud for terminal or modem.
o Internal parallel port for printers.
o A2065 and Ameristar