uClinux/ViewStation

This page describes my current project of porting Linux to the old HDS ViewStation boxes which are available on the surplus market from time to time. The model that I happen to have is an early ViewStation FX with board revision PC-FXD-001. No code is available at this time (I have not gotten around to editing all of the header comments as required by the GPL), but the goal is to get the port folded into the official uClinux distribution. A binary is available, however.

The ViewStation was an early network computer produced by Human Designed Systems. HDS has since been acquired by Neoware. It contains a small power supply and a nonstandard motherboard. It has 2 72 pin SIMM slots, which can hold SIMMs up to 64MB each. Some of them also have a little bit of RAM soldered onto the board.

The CPU that drives this thing is an i960-CA, running at a measly 16MHz. 25MHz is common. You might even get lucky enough to obtain a 66MHz version. There is existing uClinux support for the i960, but it is for an evaluation board which has vastly differing characteristics from this one. I am using the binary distribution of CTOOLS which I got from Keith Adams (who did the existing i960 port for uClinux). It is old, but it works. I've tried a few times to use GCC instead, but it simply lacks the ability to generate position independent code, and I don't have what it would take to add that functionality to the compiler at this time.

Here is some sample startup output from the kernel booting up.

uClinux i960CA
ViewStation FX port (C) 2000 Lou Sortman
i960 port (C) 1999 Keith Adams, Erik Walthinsen, Oregon Graduate Institute
Flat model support (C) 1998 Kenneth Albanowski, D. Jeff Dionne, TSHG Ltd.
Calibrating delay loop.. ok - 24.78 BogoMIPS
Memory available: 8260k/9849k RAM, (1980k kernel data, 390k code)
Swansea University Computer Society NET3.035 for Linux 2.0
NET3: Unix domain sockets 0.13 for Linux NET3.035.
Swansea University Computer Society TCP/IP for NET3.034
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
uClinux-i960 version 2.0.38.1pre3 (lou@gumby) (gcc960 Version 6.0.6006 Sat Jan 23 17:35:05 PST 1999) #692 Sun Jul 9 11:58:26 CDT 2000
nvm: Nonvolatile Memory Driver v0.0
eth0: i596 at 0x10000000, 00 80 96 01 23 45 IRQ 4.
Sending BOOTP requests.... OK
Root-NFS: Got BOOTP answer from 1.2.3.4, my address is 1.2.3.5
Root-NFS: Got file handle for /tftpboot/1.2.3.5/fs/root via RPC
VFS: Mounted root (nfs filesystem).

Tasks

Gory details

Things I've Learned While Working On This Project

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I am interested in knowing whether there are other people who are interested in running Linux on these things, and can be emailed from the following link. Email Form


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