Pinebook and NetBSD 8.99.39

[Ron Georgia <netverbs%gmail.com@localhost>]

I just received my new 1080P 11inch (27.94 cm) Pinebook. It was pre-loaded with Ubuntu and KDE. While I like KDE, it seems a bit heavy. Ubuntu is ... ok, but I would rather have NetBSD and LXDE or Mate. I attempted to install NetBSD but ran into some problems. Most likely due to my incomplete understanding (see tag line below). 

1. I downloaded the Pinebook image (NetBSD-evbarm-aarch64-201905120950Z-pinebook.img) from https://www.invisible.ca/arm/ 
2. dd the image to my microSD card.
3. Inserted the micro SD into the SD slot of the Pinebook and booted.

The first boot ended in a ==> prompt. Not sure what that was all about.
Reboot produced the NetBSD "arm" boot processes; however, there was a problem. When presented with the login prompt I tried to type "root" but the right side of the keyboard acts like a number pad. Pressing "o" gives me the escape sequence for a "6" without the numlock engaged. Pressing shift "o" gets me a capital O while Fn + o gets me a "6."

Questions:
1. Is there a way to make the keyboard a standard keyboard?
2. Once booted, now do I "reflash" the internal drive to boot NetBSD without having to boot from the micro SD card?


using the "highly recommend" Etcher

Ron Georgia
“90% of my problems are due to ignorance, the other 10% is because I just don’t know any better.”