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OpenBSD/mvme88k is an effort to port OpenBSD to the systems built upon Motorola's 881x0-based VME motherboard family.
A mailing list for m88k-based ports is available at m88k@openbsd.org. To join the OpenBSD/m88k mailing list, send a message body of "subscribe m88k" to majordomo@openbsd.org. Please be sure to check our mailing list policy before subscribing.
The current port maintainer is Miod Vallat (miod@openbsd.org), with the help of Steve Murphree. Others are definitely welcome to contribute!
The Motorola 88k processor is said to be the best RISC processor ever devised. Its simplicity and elegance combine to make the mvme88k a hearty, robust platform.
Nivas Madhur started the initial mvme88k port for the MVME187 card, but has since moved on to another employer. The port was brought in the OpenBSD tree by Dale Rahn, but he did not have enough time to work on it. Steve Murphree, Jr. eventually completed the port to the MVME187 in November 1998.
Unfortunately, at the same time, a compiler upgrade from gcc 2.8.1 to egcs revealed a lot of problems in the mvme88k support in gcc, which could not be fixed in time for mvme88k to be a supported OpenBSD 2.5 release.
The lack of an in-tree toolchain did not prevent further work on the port, and a lot of changes were made to the codebase, such as revamped autoconf and on-board SCSI driver, greatly expanded VME bus support, working install process that correctly creates a Motorola VID block on the disks, and support for MVME188 as well as improving support for MVME197.
During summer 2003, an effort to fix the toolchain eventually produced a working gcc 2.95 compiler, and allowed the port to be self-hosting again. With the help of Mark Kettenis, the toolchain effort eventually produced working binutils and gdb in late may 2004.
Work towards multiprocessor support on the MVME188 boards started in summer 2005 and, after a lot of tedious bugfixing, was eventually completed shortly after the 4.2 release in november 2007.
The next step was getting the 88110-based MVME197 designs to work. Single-processor kernels started to run reliably in december 2007.
Currently, MVME187, MVME188 and MVME197 boards, as well as similar designs, are booting multi-user, supporting most of the on-board devices. There are still a few caveats; depending on your exact hardware setup, your mileage may vary. Work is in progress to fix the remaining problems.
Besides various Motorola complete systems (M8120, Series 900, etc), this port also runs on the MVME187-based Triton Dolphin System 100.
These boards are currently not supported. There is nothing, apart from lack of available hardware, preventing them from being supported eventually.
The latest supported OpenBSD/mvme88k release is OpenBSD 4.5. Here are the OpenBSD/mvme88k 4.5 installation instructions .
Snapshots are made available from time to time, in this location as well as in a few mirrors. Here are the OpenBSD/mvme88k snapshot installation instructions as well.
As VME hardware is quite uncommon in the average retail place, and Motorola 881x0-based hardware is even more rare, this section is here to satisfy the well-founded curiosity about the mvme88k hardware.
A comprehensive reference about the m88k processor and the various designs built upon it is being gathered by Paul Weissmann at badabada.
Pictures of a Motorola 900 modular chassis, with a 33MHz MVME187 CPU board, 32MB RAM, 4 MVME332XT serial boards, and an Archive 250MB QIC tape drive.
This is a boot log of an MVME197 system.
[ using 179870 bytes of bsd a.out symbol table ]
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1995-2007 OpenBSD. All rights reserved. http://www.OpenBSD.org
OpenBSD 4.2-current (GENERIC) #178: Tue Dec 25 20:55:33 GMT 2007
miod@ramade.gentiane.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/mvme88k/compile/GENERIC
real mem = 402653184 (384MB)
avail mem = 384249856 (366MB)
mainbus0 at root: Motorola MVME197, 50MHz
cpu0: M88110 version 0xf, 8K I/D caches
cpu0: external M88410 cache controller
bussw0 at mainbus0 addr 0xfff00000: rev 4
pcctwo0 at bussw0 offset 0x0: rev 0
nvram0 at pcctwo0 offset 0xc0000: MK48T08
cl0 at pcctwo0 offset 0x45000 ipl 3: console
osiop0 at pcctwo0 offset 0x47000 ipl 2: NCR53C710 rev 2, 50MHz, SCSI ID 7
scsibus0 at osiop0: 8 targets
vme0 at pcctwo0 offset 0x40000: system controller
vme0: using BUG parameters
vme0: 1phys 0x18000000-0xefff0000 to VME 0x18000000-0xefff0000
vme0: vme to cpu irq level 1:1
vmes0 at vme0
le0 at vmes0 addr 0xffff1200 ipl 3 vec 0x80: address 00:00:77:83:ac:56
le0: 128 receive buffers, 32 transmit buffers
vs0 at vmes0 addr 0xffff9000 ipl 2 vec 0x81 vec 0x82: SCSI ID 7/7
scsibus1 at vs0: 8 targets
sd0 at scsibus1 targ 0 lun 0: <COMPAQPC, DCAS-32160, S6CA> SCSI2 0/direct fixed
sd0: 2006MB, 8188 cyl, 3 head, 167 sec, 512 bytes/sec, 4110000 sec total
scsibus2 at vs0: 8 targets
vmel0 at vme0
ie0 at pcctwo0 offset 0x46000 ipl 3: address 08:00:3e:23:ed:e8
softraid0 at root
boot device: sd0
root on sd0a swap on sd0b dump on sd0b
Automatic boot in progress: starting file system checks.
/dev/rsd0a: file system is clean; not checking
/dev/rsd0d: file system is clean; not checking
/dev/rsd0e: file system is clean; not checking
/dev/rsd0h: file system is clean; not checking
/dev/rsd0f: file system is clean; not checking
/dev/rsd0g: file system is clean; not checking
setting tty flags
ddb.console: 0 -> 1
kern.splassert: 1 -> 2
starting network
starting system logger
starting initial daemons: portmap ypbind rdate timed.
savecore: no core dump
checking quotas: done.
building ps databases: kvm dev.
clearing /tmp
starting pre-securelevel daemons:.
setting kernel security level: kern.securelevel: 0 -> 1
creating runtime link editor directory cache.
preserving editor files
starting network daemons: sendmail inetd sshd.
starting local daemons:.
standard daemons: cron.
Tue Dec 25 20:58:47 GMT 2007
OpenBSD/mvme88k (ramade.gentiane.org) (console)
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