Annotation of www/romp.html, Revision 1.23
1.22 bentley 1: <!doctype html>
2: <html lang=en id=platform>
3: <meta charset=utf-8>
4:
1.1 downsj 5: <title>OpenBSD/romp</title>
6: <meta name="description" content="the OpenBSD/romp page">
1.20 tb 7: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
8: <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="openbsd.css">
1.21 tb 9: <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.openbsd.org/romp.html">
1.1 downsj 10:
1.10 miod 11:
1.22 bentley 12: <h2 id=OpenBSD>
1.20 tb 13: <a href="index.html">
1.22 bentley 14: <i>Open</i><b>BSD</b></a>
15: romp
1.20 tb 16: </h2>
1.10 miod 17: <hr>
1.22 bentley 18:
19: <table><tr><td>
1.20 tb 20: <p>
1.22 bentley 21: There used to be an "OpenBSD/romp" effort to port OpenBSD to the IBM 6150
1.15 miod 22: and 6151 machines, also known as RT/PC. These machines were IBM's first try
23: into the workstation world, in 1986, and are the ancestors of the RS/6000
24: machines of today.
1.22 bentley 25:
1.19 deraadt 26: <p>
1.15 miod 27: However, nowadays, it makes little sense to port to a machine which can not
28: support more than 16 megabytes of memory.
1.22 bentley 29: </table>
1.10 miod 30:
1.19 deraadt 31: <hr>
1.1 downsj 32:
1.22 bentley 33: <h3 id="history"><strong>History:</strong></h3>
1.1 downsj 34:
35: <p>
1.23 ! jsg 36: IBM's Academic Information Systems (ACIS) ported BSD to the
! 37: RT PC for educational sites not wanting to run AIX.
! 38: Initially 4.2BSD as Academic Information Systems (AIS),
! 39: and later 4.3BSD as Academic Operating System (AOS).
! 40: Mark Dapoz and Roger Florkowski later continued this effort with changes
! 41: from 4.3BSD-Reno and 4.4BSD-Lite.
1.10 miod 42: <p>
43: The code eventually was released to the community in the late 1990's, with
44: uncertain license terms. People on the list started to play with the code,
45: fixing bugs in it, making it compilable with gcc, and slowly filling the gaps
1.15 miod 46: between the 4.3BSD era and modern times. But unless someone dedicated to this
47: effort ends up having too much time on his hands, a free operating system
48: port will never happen.
1.10 miod 49:
50: <hr>
1.22 bentley 51:
52: <h3 id="status"><strong>Current status:</strong></h3>
1.10 miod 53:
54: <p>
1.22 bentley 55: There is currently no code publicly available, however, people used to
1.15 miod 56: work on the code, and patches used to flow privately or on the list from
57: time to time. Nothing has happened within the last ten years, though.
58: Contact <a href="mailto:miod@openbsd.org">Miod Vallat</a> if you are
59: deluded or want more information.
1.1 downsj 60:
61: <hr>
1.22 bentley 62:
63: <h3 id="projects"><strong>Projects (in no particular order):
64: </strong></h3>
1.10 miod 65:
66: <p>
67: <ul>
1.15 miod 68: <li>Fix romp backend bugs in gcc, and get it working in the gcc 2.95 tree.
1.10 miod 69: <li>Write code for binutils supporting the romp, rather than fixing the
70: romp-specific as and ld; eventually, move to ELF
1.15 miod 71: <li>Get hardware documentation (some is available on bitsavers)
1.10 miod 72: </ul>