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Revision 1.15, Wed Jun 20 18:27:51 2012 UTC (11 years, 11 months ago) by miod
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.14: +20 -12 lines 

Make it obvious that, after no work in ten years, nothing will ever happen
(unless I am *REALLY* bored)

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<title>OpenBSD/romp</title>
<link rev="made" href="mailto:www@openbsd.org">
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<meta name="description" content="the OpenBSD/romp page">
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<p>
<h2><font color="#e00000">OpenBSD/romp</font></h2>

<hr>

<p>
There used to be an ``OpenBSD/romp'' effort to port OpenBSD to the IBM 6150
and 6151 machines, also known as RT/PC. These machines were IBM's first try
into the workstation world, in 1986, and are the ancestors of the RS/6000
machines of today.

<p>
However, nowadays, it makes little sense to port to a machine which can not
support more than 16 megabytes of memory.

<p>
A (very quiet) mailing list dedicated to the OpenBSD/romp porting effort is
available at <u><font color="#23238e">romp@openbsd.org</font></u>.
It has not seen a message in years.<br>
To join the OpenBSD/romp mailing list, send a message body of <b>"subscribe
romp"</b> to <a href="mailto:majordomo@openbsd.org">majordomo@openbsd.org</a>.
Please be sure to check our <a href="mail.html">mailing list policy</a> before
subscribing.

<a name="toc"></a>
<h3><font color="#0000e0"><i>Table of contents</i></font></h3>
<p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="#history">History of the port</a>
  <li><a href="#status">Current status</a>
  <li><a href="#projects">Project list</a>
</ul>

<hr>
<a name="history"></a>
<h3><font color="#0000e0"><strong>History:</strong></font></h3>

<p>
Mark Dapoz and Roger Florkowski ported a mix of 4.3BSD and 4.4BSD to the
romp in the late 1980's, for educational sites not wanting to run AIX on their
machines. This port was named ``AOS''.

<p>
The code eventually was released to the community in the late 1990's, with
uncertain license terms. People on the list started to play with the code,
fixing bugs in it, making it compilable with gcc, and slowly filling the gaps
between the 4.3BSD era and modern times. But unless someone dedicated to this
effort ends up having too much time on his hands, a free operating system
port will never happen.

<hr>
<a name="status"></a>
<h3><font color="#0000e0"><strong>Current status:</strong></font></h3>

<p>
There is currently no code publically available, however, people used to
work on the code, and patches used to flow privately or on the list from
time to time. Nothing has happened within the last ten years, though.
Contact <a href="mailto:miod@openbsd.org">Miod Vallat</a> if you are
deluded or want more information.

<hr>
<a name="projects"></a>
<h3><font color="#0000e0"><strong>Projects (in no particular order):
</strong></font></h3>

<p>
<ul>
  <li>Fix romp backend bugs in gcc, and get it working in the gcc 2.95 tree.
  <li>Write code for binutils supporting the romp, rather than fixing the
      romp-specific as and ld; eventually, move to ELF
  <li>Get hardware documentation (some is available on bitsavers)
</ul>

<hr>
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<br>
<small><a href="mailto:www@openbsd.org">www@openbsd.org</a></small>
<br>
<small>$OpenBSD: romp.html,v 1.15 2012/06/20 18:27:51 miod Exp $</small>

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