NetBSD

History

pk 70f20a1217 Replace the traditional buffer memory management -- based on fixed per buffer virtual memory reservation and a private pool of memory pages -- by a scheme based on memory pools. This allows better utilization of memory because buffers can now be allocated with a granularity finer than the system's native page size (useful for filesystems with e.g. 1k or 2k fragment sizes). It also avoids fragmentation of virtual to physical memory mappings (due to the former fixed virtual address reservation) resulting in better utilization of MMU resources on some platforms. Finally, the scheme is more flexible by allowing run-time decisions on the amount of memory to be used for buffers. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the LRU queue for buffer recycling may be somewhat reduced compared to the traditional method since, due to the nature of the pool based memory allocation, the actual least recently used buffer may release its memory to a pool different from the one needed by a newly allocated buffer. However, this effect will kick in only if the system is under memory pressure.		2003-12-30 12:33:13 +00:00
..
cesfic	Replace the traditional buffer memory management -- based on fixed per buffer	2003-12-30 12:33:13 +00:00
compile	Rework how KERNOBJDIR functions; now it's always determined with	2003-01-06 17:40:18 +00:00
conf	Change reference at bottom from sys/dev/majors to sys/conf/majors to match	2003-12-10 02:04:00 +00:00
dev	Cast to (void *) to appease gcc3.	2003-09-28 22:00:26 +00:00
include	Move UCB-licensed code from 4-clause to 3-clause licence.	2003-08-07 16:26:28 +00:00
Makefile	Rework how KERNOBJDIR functions; now it's always determined with	2003-01-06 17:40:18 +00:00
README	netbsd.org -> NetBSD.org	2003-12-04 13:05:15 +00:00

README

$NetBSD: README,v 1.2 2003/12/04 13:05:16 keihan Exp $

This is a port of NetBSD to the FIC8234 VME processor board, made by the
swiss company CES (Geneve). These boards are (or have been) popular in
high energy physics data acquisition (think of CERN!). See
http://www.ces.ch/Products/CPUs/FIC8234/FIC8234.html
for some technical data.

The highlights:
- MC68040 processor at 25 MHz (optional dual-processor)
- 8 or 32 MByte RAM
- 2 serial ports on Z85c30
- 79c900 (ILACC) ethernet
- 53c710 SCSI

The port is quite rudimentary at the moment. The kernel is started out of
a running OS-9 system. SCSI support is not present yet, so it only works
diskless with NFS (or ramdisk - not tested) root.
It is good enough for multiuser, self-hosting etc. however.

To start it:
- make OS image by "objcopy --output-target=binary netbsd <imagename>"
- load image to physical address 0x20100000 (RAM start + 1M)
- jump to 0x20100400

For questions and contributions, contact Matthias Drochner
(drochner@NetBSD.org).