So I had a random thought in the wee hours this morning and I leave it
to you, the cctalk braintrust, to tell me exactly how stupid this idea is:
I have a VAX-11/750, an Able QNiverter (UNIBUS->Qbus adapter), a 22-bit
Qbus backplane, and a VCB02 (QDSS) 4-bit graphics boardset.
Theory: With an appropriately modified NetBSD driver for the VCB02, such
that it provides only 18-bit addresses to the VCB02's DMA engine, I can
get X running on the VCB02 on the 11/750.
That is, the configuration is: 11/750->Unibus->QNiverter->Qbus->VCB02.
Obviously the console functionality of the VCB02 won't work since that
requires support on the VAX side of things that won't be present, but I
think everything else should work. I've browsed the technical manual
and I don't see anything that should get in the way, I'll just need to
hack up the driver appropriately.
But this is something that randomly popped into my head (I was inspired
by a research paper, "A VAX Based Data Acquisition Computer System at
the Nuclear Structure Research Laboratory" wherein a Matrox QRGB Qbus
graphics board was lashed to an 11/750 in a similar manner...
What say you all?
- Josh
