Hello, As you may have noticed, a new port has been added to OpenBSD's portfolio: OpenBSD/aviion, addressing the older (Motorola-based) Data General AViiON workstations - more recent models are x86-based and will run OpenBSD/i386 flawlessly.
This port is unique amongst all the OpenBSD ports, as it has been written without access to the hardware it runs on. This has been possible because, unlike modern hardware, these machines used to come with enough hardware documentation to allow the motivated programmer to write code for it. In this particular case, the documentation hinted that the design was close to another hardware design OpenBSD runs on, so it was worth giving the port a try. In less than two weeks, despite living in different time zones, Chris Tribo (who owns an AV410 machine) and I could get OpenBSD/aviion booting multiuser. I would like to extend the hardware coverage of this port by supporting more models and more on-board devices. But as long as I do not have AViiON hardware and rely on other people for testing, development will not progress very fast, and will hit on our nerves. So if you have an unused AViiON machine in your Attic you have no real use for, or if you know someone who wants to get rid of his... please get in touch with me. This would definitely help this emerging port a lot! Thanks, Miod
