I am having difficultly getting NetBSD_Mac to run on a IIx.  The machine is
a basic IIx with 8Mb ram, Apple (toby frame buffer) video card (set to 1
bit depth), internal 80Mb HD (all MacOS) and an external 80Mb HD configured
with Apple's HD Setup 7.3 as "A/UX system/minimum Macintosh".  I am using
Jul 16 tar files from ftp.iastate.edu supplemented with one or two tar
files from cray-ymp.  The kernel is the jul 11 one from cray-ymp along with
the current dt.tar (which I have no idea how to use).

I have read the FAQ, along with just about anything else I could get my
hands on.  I was very careful to download all the files in binary mode and
ensured that MacGzip was set to binary mode as well.

I have very little unix knowledge.  I am hopeing to be able to use NetBSD
on my IIx to familiarize myself with the unix operating system and its
adminastration. (in my professional life I am a systems programmer on large
IBM mainframes running the MVS operating system).

When I run the booter the screen changes and NetBSD goes through a boot
sequence.  With the single user option checked, the system appears to go
through a process of identifying the various hardware components.  It then
asks for a shell (I respond by hitting return), next it asks for the
terminal type (I respond with VT100).  I am then left in single user mode,
superuser prompt (#) with a read only file system.  I am able, at this
point, to move around the file system and list various files.  This lasts
for a little while and ends up with a constantly scrolling #  # on the
screen (I think I saw this mentioned in discussion here) at which point I
reach around the back and reboot.  If I try and mount the file system
read/write with the mount command I get a response "No /etc/fstab".  When I
try and go to multi-user mode (control-d return), I get paragraphs of text
that start with "Welcome to NetBSD....".  It appears to be trying to
execute some commands, but they are apparently failing and this process
continues to loop (until control-c).

I have played around with different combinations of the tar files and the
kernels, however the above combination is the one that I have gotten the
farthest.

From the discussion on this mailing list, it sounds like other people have
gotten much farther than I have.  I am not sure what to do next.  If all
will be well when the 1.0 release comes out (next week??) I can wait for
that.  However, I suspect that there is some flaw in what I am doing that
will still cause me trouble with the 1.0 release.  If someone could point
out what I am doing wrong or not doing that I should be doing, I would
really appreciate it.  I might even offer to help update the FAQ based on
what I have learned.

I hope someone can help.

BTW, I would like to thank the ALICE team for their efforts in porting
NetBSD to the Mac.  An outstanding effort.

pdj

Paul Jaffray
pjaffray@orange.digex.net



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