Hello, This may be of interest to DECstation and VAX users. I did some work on mopd sources recently again. As a result, it is now possible to boot a system over a FDDI link. I was able to successfully boot my DECstation 5000/240 using its DEC FDDIcontroller 700 (aka DEFZA-AA) from my i386-based development box using a DEC FDDIcontroller/PCI (DEFPA-AB). The performance is not astonishing, supposedly due to the funky hardware and firmware of the DEFZA -- a kernel loads about 1.5 times longer than via the onboard Ethernet (LANCE) interface, even though both interfaces request the same packet length for incoming packets. A DEC FDDIcontroller/TURBOchannel (DEFTA-xx) would likely perform much better. I suppose a VAX equipped with a TURBOchannel adapter and either of the controllers would be able to boot using it as well. And similarly for the native FDDI interfaces (DEC FDDIcontroller 400, aka DEMFA, etc.). Both MOP version 3 and 4 are supported. While the DEFZA uses version 3, differences between the versions are minimal (different SNAP protocol IDs), so even though untested, version 4 should just work, too. Apart from adding FDDI support, I did a few clean-ups. One detail to note is mopd now binds packet sockets it creates to specific interfaces. As a result response packets are only directed to the interface requests come from. There is a drawback of the change, though -- if any of the interfaces mopd listens on gets down, the daemon dies. This is yet to be resolved. Raw patches as well as RPM packages (source, mipsel and i386) are available at the usual places -- the master site is at 'ftp://ftp.ds2.pg.gda.pl/pub/macro/'. Please cc replies, if any, to the linux-mips list or to me directly. Maciej -- + Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + e-mail: macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available +
