NetBSD/acorn32 History

NetBSD/acorn32 has been split of from the NetBSD/arm32 port for the arm32 port began to grow and grow and included too diverse machines to keep it maintainable.

NetBSD/arm32 originally formed the basis of a project called “RiscBSD”. The RiscBSD group (originally Mark Brinicombe, Robert Black, Neil Carson, Manar Hussain, Scott Stevens, and Melvin Tang-Richardson) wanted to port a free unix operating system to Acorn's newly announced RiscPC system which was based on the ARM610 processor. The RiscBSD project was first conceived at the launch of Acorn's RiscPC, due to the presence of Xara's Gordon Taylor. We went ahead, and after carefully studying the likes of Mach, Linux and FreeBSD, nominated NetBSD as our OS of choice.

As time drifted by, the team reduced in size with only Mark, Neil, Robert and Scott remaining. Network Computer (now Liberate Technologies) then funded the development of a variety of enhancements to the operating system and associated toolchain, for use on the Digital Shark computer (see: NetBSD/shark).