NetBSD 9.2 on the Amiga 1200

[danielktdoranie]

So I am going to attempt to install NetBSD 9.2 one of my A1200 computers. The candidate I have picked has a Phase 5 Blizzard 1230 MK IV w/ a 50MHz MC68030RC50C, the 68882 FPU and 128MB RAM. I also have an OSSC for display issues and a 3COM EtherLink III PCMCIA Ethernet adapter (I checked, it is supported in NetBSD 9.2, 9.1 too)

Anyone here done this before? What issues have you faced? What physical ROMS should I use? Cheers!

[stevelord]

I've installed NetBSD 9.2 on my A4000. As long as you have an MMU you should be good to go. Just expect it to be very very slow and the WSCONS kernel doesn't appear to support X11 (at least on AGA)

[danielktdoranie]

Originally Posted by stevelord

I've installed NetBSD 9.2 on my A4000. As long as you have an MMU you should be good to go. Just expect it to be very very slow and the WSCONS kernel doesn't appear to support X11 (at least on AGA)

Thanks for your reply.

As for AGA graphics and x11… does this help? https://www.amigareport.com/ar315/ftp14.html

[stevelord]

Originally Posted by danielktdoranie

Thanks for your reply.

As for AGA graphics and x11… does this help? https://www.amigareport.com/ar315/ftp14.html

Not really. That's an X11 Window Manager available in NetBSD. The issue is that there's no direct WSCONS support the Amiga's custom chips. There's Amidisplaycc which provides the minimum console support but that's it.

[danielktdoranie]

Originally Posted by stevelord

Not really. That's an X11 Window Manager available in NetBSD. The issue is that there's no direct WSCONS support the Amiga's custom chips. There's Amidisplaycc which provides the minimum console support but that's it.

In older versions of NetBSD there were several different Amiga-specific X11 servers to choose from. You installed a server based on what kind of graphics chipset you had.

In recent versions of NetBSD, these are no longer used and instead there is a single Xorg binary that uses NetBSD's wscons (Workstation Console) framework. Xorg uses a driver called wsfb, and wsfb, in turn, uses a driver for your specific hardware.

Unfortunately, there is no wsfb driver for the native Amiga chipset so X11 is not possible on a stock Amiga, but there is support for some RTG cards. CyberVision, Picasso, Piccolo, Spectrum, Domino, Merlin and oMnibus cards can all work with wsfb. There is also a working ZZ9000 driver that will hopefully make it into the next release

Seems you are correct, sadly. Looks like when they went to X.org they dropped this support.

[danielktdoranie]

Maybe OpenBSD? https://www.openbsd.org/amiga.html

Seems the last release to support Amiga was 2002's 3.2... X.org server didn't come out until 2004.

[stevelord]

I haven't tried OpenBSD but someone else did here: https://hup.hu/node/166365 (Google Translate might help). You might get better something more modern from a pre-Xorg NetBSD.

[Rotzloeffel]

Originally Posted by danielktdoranie

Seems you are correct, sadly. Looks like when they went to X.org they dropped this support.

I tested cv64, cv64/3D with 16 bit modes, also Merlin but there are only 8 bit modes possible!