NetBSD on a JavaStation

Hard as it may be to imagine, there was a time when Java was brand new and exciting. Long before it became the vast clunky back-end leviathan it is today, it was going to be the ubiquitous graphical platform that would be used on everything from cell phones to supercomputers: write once, run anywhere. Initially I drank the kool-aid and was thrilled about this new “modern” language that was going to take over the world, and drooled at the notion of Java-based computers, containing Java chips that could run java byte-code as their native machine code. I even had a promotional flyer stuck to my wall, alongside pictures of Lydia Lunch, drum machines, and Jimi Hendrix; it had a picture of the soon to be released JavaStation, looking like a designer purple coffee pot; it stimulated my imagination just by looking at it. Of course, as it transpired, things didn’t quite go to plan: the JavaStation didn’t materialise for ages, and when it did, it didn’t look like a coffee pot, it looked like ... Read full article.