VME Hardware Support

Motorola MVME166 and MVME167 boards

(written by Richard Hirst)

There are multiple VME boards out there on which Linux/m68k could run. There is currently one port for the Motorola MVME166 and MVME167 boards. These are complete systems on a card, so there's no need to support any external controller cards:

The released source is based on 2.0.29, but it is now being integrated in to the 2.1 development tree. The system will happily loop building the kernel for hours on end with no problems (no '040 MMU bug here!) It takes about 20 minutes to build a kernel.

More information can be found at Richard's VMEbus port page.

Motorola MVME162 board

Richard has also ported Linux/m68k to the MVME162 (after the original port was made by Vaughn Skinner and lost in a disk crash). It "basically works as well as the 166 and 167" ports according to Richard.

The needed files can be downloaded from Richard's VME page.

Motorola MVME147 board

A port to the MVME147 board was made by Dave Frascone <chaos@mindspring.com>. It has been integrated into Richard's VME port, and can be found at the same page.

Other VME Boards: VME 17x, BVME4000/6000

The VME 17x series of boards are similar to the 16x series, except they have 68060 processors. According to Richard Hirst, the corresponding 16x port should run fine with the data cache disabled (which will cause a performance drop-off), if you compile the kernel with 68060 support. The caching problem will be resolved in due course.

Richard has also teamed up with BVM Ltd. to port Linux/m68k to that company's BVME4000 and 6000 boards. The port will be integrated into the development tree in the near future; you can obtain it from Richard's VME pages. More information is available on BVM's home page.

Richard is currently working on a port to the Tadpole TP34V, a 68030-based VME single-board computer.