As Curt Sampson wrote...
> On Tue, 14 Oct 1997, Wilko Bulte wrote:
> 
> > As Ross Harvey wrote...
> > > 
> > > Get the platform working with existing netboot code first. Only when
> > > everything is working diskless should you screw around with a new driver.
> > 
> > Maybe I'm missing your point: this would mean that I need to get a DE422
> > (that's what the Jensen has) driver working. 
> 
> Yes, eventually, although the first (console) and second (loaded
> via TFTP, usually) stage bootstraps would normally just use the
> console callbacks to load stuff, so you should actually be able to
> load a kernel via the network without that device driver. Once
> you've got the kernel loaded and running to the point where it will
> get to single-user mode with a ramdisk root, then you can worry
> about getting drivers working.

Ramdisk root, right. I missed that point. Dumb.. I just fetched the
netboot docs from the WWW and I'll also give that a try.

> > I currently have D-Unix on the first disk, NetBSD 1.2 on the second.
> > I can use D-Unix to drop test kernels, generated by the Multia, onto
> > the Jensen's NetBSD disk. 
> 
> Ouch. This sounds like a lot more work to me, because you'll have
> to be moving disks around and rebooting your development machine
> all the time.

Actually it is pretty easy: I have a Jensen with 2 disks inside.
One holds D-Unix, the other one NetBSD (a rz25 image). 

The development box is the Multia, which has 2 disks in a Storageworks
box. Multia runs netbsd (I decided to wait a little for 1.3, and have
the Multia run that). 2nd Multia disk has all the netbsd source.

A 3rd box is a FreeBSD (P100) machine that hooks up to the serial console
of the Jensen, and via Ethernet to all my boxes around here (there is
also a Mac, a Sun IPC, a PDP11/73, a 486DX2/66, none of them relevant for
this discussion).

I can simply ftp or nfs the test kernel from the multia onto the Jensen
(running D-Unix at that time) and see what happens ;-)

But I'll also setup netbooting to see how well that works. Should be able
to boot the Jensen off the Multia.

> > Isn't that an easier approach than netbooting? It's probably easier
> > for me to get a Adaptec 1742A driver working than a DE422 one (I've
> > done SCSI drivers in the distant past, networking drivers are unchartered
> > territory).
> 
> Networking drivers are way easier than SCSI drivers. However, the

Hm. 

> 1742 may `just work.' It's probably pretty close at any rate. It's
> one of those things we've got support for, but it's never been
> tested. Usually all you need to do for those drivers is fix up a
> bunch of alignment stuff that the i386 didn't care about.

I've seen some remarks in the changelogs for 1.3 that the 1742 driver
should now be architecture independent. I'm sort of betting on that to be
true, as it is rumored to be untested. So let's play guinea pig here.

Wilko
_     ____________________________________________________________________
 |   / o / /  _  Bulte  email: wilko@yedi.iaf.nl http://www.tcja.nl/~wilko
 |/|/ / / /( (_) Arnhem, The Netherlands - Do, or do not. There is no 'try'
----------------------------------------------------------------------Yoda