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romanis | 1 Sep 2007 10:39
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Boot problems with NetBSD-current on VAX

Hi,

today i installed NetBSD-current on my 4000/90 (200708300002Z from NetBSD-daily). It seems to be a
problem with the boot-block of current.
The system wasn't bootable after the install (using boot.fs). I managed to install the system with an older
boot.fs (NetBSD-2.1) without any further problems.

I repeated the installation in simh with the same result.

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Johnny Billquist | 1 Sep 2007 11:55
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Re: Boot problems with NetBSD-current on VAX

romanis <at> gmx.ch skrev:
> Hi,
> 
> today i installed NetBSD-current on my 4000/90 (200708300002Z from NetBSD-daily). It seems to be a
problem with the boot-block of current.
> The system wasn't bootable after the install (using boot.fs). I managed to install the system with an
older boot.fs (NetBSD-2.1) without any further problems.
> 
> I repeated the installation in simh with the same result.

Unfortunately, -current isn't usable at all on a VAX. Haven't been since 4.99.20 
(or was it .19?).

	Johnny

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Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt <at> softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
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David Brownlee | 21 Sep 2007 16:32
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Compiling fast on a VAX?

 	The answer to everyone's "gcc takes forever to compile"
 	prayers may be closed to being answered...

 	Ragge has rewritten the original PCC - the goal to be a
 	small, fast C99 compiler under a BSD licence.

 	Currently the x86 backend is getting all the focus, but
 	there is a prototype of a VAX backend which could do with
 	being updated by someone with the necessary time and fax-fu.

 	You can get it from http://www.ludd.ltu.se/~ragge/pcc/, plus
 	a copy is in NetBSD-current.

 	So... anyone up to the challenge?

--
 			   David Brownlee -- abs <at> absd.org
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Dave McGuire | 21 Sep 2007 23:25

Re: Compiling fast on a VAX?

On Sep 21, 2007, at 10:32 AM, David Brownlee wrote:
> 	The answer to everyone's "gcc takes forever to compile"
> 	prayers may be closed to being answered...
>
> 	Ragge has rewritten the original PCC - the goal to be a
> 	small, fast C99 compiler under a BSD licence.
>
> 	Currently the x86 backend is getting all the focus, but
> 	there is a prototype of a VAX backend which could do with
> 	being updated by someone with the necessary time and fax-fu.
>
> 	You can get it from http://www.ludd.ltu.se/~ragge/pcc/, plus
> 	a copy is in NetBSD-current.
>
> 	So... anyone up to the challenge?

   This is an intriguing project, and it pleases me bigtime to see it  
happening.  I'm not much of a compiler internals guy, but I'd love to  
do some testing and code generation comparisons.

             -Dave

--

-- 
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007
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Lord Isildur | 24 Sep 2007 21:35
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Re: Compiling fast on a VAX?

yummy, i'm going to have to play with this!
(been a long time since i've poked myhead above the surface here, 
greetings to everyone! good to see familiar faces (well, names) about!)

so i think about 5 years ago we had a thread about pcc versus gcc. pcc's
optimization is more or less nonexistent, so it produces slower code,
but on the other hand, pcc's libc is much simpler (and somewhat less safe
or correct, mind you) and so it can work out either way. We were comparing
old BSD and NetBSD systems. Stuff compiled against the old libc from 
CSRG-era bsd and pcc was noticeably faster if you did a lot of things like 
printf, but slower if you were pushing structs around in core and doing
thinsg that a good optimizer can get a lot smarter at (especially with
plenty of registers).
The big win was in the speed of compilation. I'm not sure how much of
the slowness of gcc is in the useful parts of optimization versus what 
parts are wasting our time.

I think at the time, we had also discussed the possibility of rolling back 
to an older version of gcc (the 2.low numbers)- the VAX optimizer is 
unlikely to have changed much in the past 15 years, so that part of gcc is
probably just about the same.. and most of the fancier stuff is 
inapplicable to vax anyway.

pcc, however, is amazingly fast for compiling..

I can make a 4000/600 with 192 megs of core available for testing.
(thorium.vaxpower.org) . it's already been used for some gcc/vax 
development some years back. currently running netbsd 2.0 but i could put
something newer on (from across the continent, i have a serial console!) 
it's still living on CMU's network.
(Continue reading)

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Thor Lancelot Simon | 26 Sep 2007 00:59

Re: Compiling fast on a VAX?

On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 03:35:11PM -0400, Lord Isildur wrote:
>
> but on the other hand, pcc's libc is much simpler (and somewhat less safe
> or correct, mind you)

Uh, what? "pcc's libc"?

Thor
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Lord Isildur | 26 Sep 2007 01:24
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Re: Compiling fast on a VAX?


i spoke sloppily. i meant (and elsewhere in that mail mentioned) the 
old-bsd libc that was used, long ago, with pcc on berkeley systems, and
which grew in much the same environment and from much the same origins as 
pcc. When the pcc/gcc thread came up in the past, one of the big 
performance issues was that the old libc in 4.3bsd was faster (and looser
when it came to protections and checking)- this had thrown off results 
from benchmarking a lot of programs, because gcc's optimization wasnt 
always better enough to overcome the slowness in gnu libc.

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
>> but on the other hand, pcc's libc is much simpler (and somewhat less safe
>> or correct, mind you)
>
> Uh, what? "pcc's libc"?
>
> Thor
>
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Thor Lancelot Simon | 26 Sep 2007 04:28

Re: Compiling fast on a VAX?

On Tue, Sep 25, 2007 at 07:24:11PM -0400, Lord Isildur wrote:
> 
> i spoke sloppily. i meant (and elsewhere in that mail mentioned) the 
> old-bsd libc that was used, long ago, with pcc on berkeley systems, and
> which grew in much the same environment and from much the same origins as 
> pcc. When the pcc/gcc thread came up in the past, one of the big 
> performance issues was that the old libc in 4.3bsd was faster (and looser
> when it came to protections and checking)- this had thrown off results 
> from benchmarking a lot of programs, because gcc's optimization wasnt 
> always better enough to overcome the slowness in gnu libc.

I still don't get it: we do not (and never have) shipped "gnu libc".
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Jason Thorpe | 26 Sep 2007 21:26

Re: Compiling fast on a VAX?


On Sep 25, 2007, at 4:24 PM, Lord Isildur wrote:

> when it came to protections and checking)- this had thrown off  
> results from benchmarking a lot of programs, because gcc's  
> optimization wasnt always better enough to overcome the slowness in  
> gnu libc.

Uh... NetBSD doesn't use GNU libc.

-- thorpej
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Lord Isildur | 26 Sep 2007 21:34
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Re: Compiling fast on a VAX?


isildur--

:)
brain and mouth/fingers were not reading from the same page. yes.
simpler terms: old csrg libc is fast&loose compared to the libc we use 
today.

On Wed, 26 Sep 2007, Jason Thorpe wrote:

> Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 12:26:18 -0700
> From: Jason Thorpe <thorpej <at> shagadelic.org>
> To: Lord Isildur <mrfusion <at> vaxpower.org>
> Cc: Thor Lancelot Simon <tls <at> rek.tjls.com>, port-vax <at> NetBSD.org
> Subject: Re: Compiling fast on a VAX?
> 
>
> On Sep 25, 2007, at 4:24 PM, Lord Isildur wrote:
>
>> when it came to protections and checking)- this had thrown off results from 
>> benchmarking a lot of programs, because gcc's optimization wasnt always 
>> better enough to overcome the slowness in gnu libc.
>
> Uh... NetBSD doesn't use GNU libc.
>
> -- thorpej
>
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