OpenBSD/vax

OpenBSD/vax runs on a large set of the VAX computers manufactured by Digital (then Compaq, now Hewlett-Packard).

A mailing list dedicated to the OpenBSD/vax port is available at vax@openbsd.org. To join the OpenBSD/vax mailing list, send a message body of "subscribe vax" to majordomo@openbsd.org. Please be sure to check our mailing list policy before subscribing.

The current port maintainers are Brandon Creighton and Hugh Graham. Others are definitely welcome to contribute!

Table of contents

• History of the port
• Current status
• Project list
• Supported hardware
• Documentation wanted
• Getting and installing OpenBSD/vax

History:

VAX has been a supported OpenBSD architecture since early 2000, when code was synchronized with NetBSD's port. Being the second architecture to run BSD Unix (in 1979!), it seems appropriate that these venerable vaxen should still have a modern OS.

The current codebase is mostly from Berkeley, with contributions of free code from Digital, Mt Xinu, NetBSD, OpenBSD and others.

After the port was synchronized with the NetBSD codebase, fixes and improvements were made, such as support for 16 partitions per drive, support for more VAX models, improved emulation of unimplemented instructions, and so on.

Development is ongoing, and changes are shared among VAX hackers even to this day. The result of this work is an operating system that is stable and familiar to any OpenBSD user.

Current status:

Currently, all the hardware listed in the supported hardware section below boots multi-user, and supports enough of the on-board devices to be generally usable. Some models can only run diskless at the moment, though.

Since none of the VAXstation frame buffers are currently supported, there are currently no X Window System servers available. However, a complete set of X clients and utilities is available, allowing OpenBSD/vax machines to behave as X11 font servers, or run X clients on remote display.

There a few problems still left in the OpenBSD/vax port, though:

• The current compiler sometimes has optimizer issues (i.e. gcc -O2 produces incorrect code, while -O1 or -O0 work). They are slowly being worked on as we are aware of them. Most code should work nowadays.
• Addressing limits in the pmap module. This can cause the kernel to panic. Some of these situations have been taken care of and fail gracefully, but there might be unfixed cases.

Projects (in no particular order):

• Write driver for the VAXstation 2000's HDC9224 (floppy/MFM hard disk controller)
• MSCP support may still be rough
• Write frame buffer drivers.
• Move to ELF and shared libraries.
• Support for any new systems we encounter

Supported hardware:

The list of supported hardware below is not meant to be exhaustive. Due to a limited inventory of systems available to developers, not all hardware combinations have been tested.

As a result, OpenBSD/vax may actually run on your machine even if it's not listed here, and we rely on your testing and feedback to keep this list up to date. To help us improve the accuracy of this list, PLEASE send your dmesg after installation to dmesg@openbsd.org.

Supported models

Almost all the on-board devices are supported on these models, except for frame buffers and keyboard interfaces. SCSI controller is only supported when listed.

• VAXstation/MicroVAX 2000
• VAXstation 3100/{30,40} (SCSI)
• VAXstation 3100/{38,48} (SCSI)
• VAXstation 3100/76 (SCSI)
• VAXstation 4000/VLC (SCSI)
• VAXstation 4000/60 (SCSI)
• VAXstation 4000/90 (SCSI)
• VAXstation 4000/96 (SCSI)
• MicroVAX 3100/{10,20}{,e} (SCSI)
• MicroVAX 3100/{30,40} (SCSI)
• MicroVAX 3100/80 (SCSI)
• MicroVAX 3100/85 (SCSI)
• MicroVAX 3100/90 (SCSI)
• MicroVAX 3300
• VAX 4000 100 (SCSI)
• VAX 4000 105 (SCSI)
• VAX 4000 200
• VAX 4000 300
• VAX 4000 {400,500,600}
• VAX 4000 {500A,700A}
• SIMH VAX

Documentation wanted:

• Programming info for LCG or SPGFX framebuffers
• Software references for SHAC DSSI
• Any edition VARM

Getting and installing OpenBSD/vax:

The latest supported OpenBSD/vax release is OpenBSD 3.6. Here are the OpenBSD/vax 3.6 installation instructions .

Snapshots are made available from time to time, in this location as well as in a few mirrors. Here are the OpenBSD/vax snapshot installation instructions as well.