I'm trying to install NetBSD 1.5 on my PowerMac 8600/250.
In fact, I did install NetBSD. Because I wanted to be able to have an 
HFS+ partition on the disk that NetBSD resides on, I ran (from the 
shell on the boot disk) (btw: this disk is ID#2, my second internal 
drive, and an IBM mechanism)
newfs /dev/rsd1a
newfs /dev/rsd1g
(both of which complained about not being able to update the 
partition/labels table)

Then I downloaded the binary packages with ftp and ran tar xzpf 
pkgname.tgz to install each.

Now, if I boot with the floppy again (which I can do), I can mount 
both of my partitions no problems. But when I try to boot into NetBSD 
using the loader on the floppy:
0> boot fd:0 -a
bla bla bla...
Boot: scsi-int/sd@2:7
  gives "Input/output error"
as does scsi-int/sd@2:x for any x 1-12..
Then
Boot: scsi-int/sd@2:7,netbsd
  gives "bad partition number, using 0" and then "Input/output error"

Thinking that maybe my disk types weren't right (I had partitioned 
this disk with Drive Setup 1.9.2) I used pdisk to rename the 
partitions. I answered the questions about swap, root, usr, etc.. and 
in giving them new names and wrote the table. And I rebooted, but I 
still get the same error.

Also, for a while I thought my disk was id 1 (you know, sd1 is id 1, 
right?) and so I was doing scsi/sd@1:0 or somesuch and I'd get 
"Device not configured", which is also what I get if I don't say 
scsi-int in the above cases. It might be useful to say, "This is the 
error you get when you try to boot from a non-existant disk."

What does "Input/output error" mean? In perusing about the list, it 
looks like other people can boot NetBSD on similar OF 1.0.5 machines, 
and I got the System disk 1.0.5 patch and I'd run it every time I'd 
reboot into NetBSD from MacOS (because I know of no other way to get 
the OF prompt other than clicking that "stop on boot" box). Also, I'd 
expect that if it really was such an error, I wouldn't be able to 
mount the filesystems in NetBSD.

Why does it give me "bad partition number" when I try to specify the 
boot file as well? I was reading some on this list that Old World 
macs always use partition 0, and that you can't specify the partition 
number. Is this the problem that I'm running into? If I load 
ofwboot's equivalent from the floppy disk, why can't I get around the 
OF bugs; I mean, its *our* code now, right?

I havnt' been religiously running "setenv real-base F00000" but I 
think that's OK since this only fixes problems *after* the kernel 
starts loading, right?

And yes, I have more babble. In pdisk, the partition numbers start 
from 1, but I assume the first partition is 0 (for all that 
"partition-zero bootloading"). So if pdisk thinks my root partition 
is 8, does that mean I should use :7 in OF? (I'm really tired of the 
guess-and check method. If it had worked the first set of 1-12 
partition tries it would be ok, but it didn't, and so I'm going 
insane..)

And finally, I have to say that I did try "setenv boot-device" and 
"setenv boot-file" but those didn't seem to affect anything once I 
got to the "Boot:" prompt after starting from the floppy. ( I also 
tried doing the thing like:
boot fd:0,ofwboot.xcf scsi-int/sd@2:7,netbsd
But that just worked the same as putting the second bit in the boot 
prompt; same errors.)

Any help at all would be wonderful.

Thanks.

-michael ferguson