Re: Keyboard lockup on 5.0.1 on A1200 during install

[Chris Edwards <cme%ihug.co.nz@localhost>]

Minor update: I don't observe this problem on a second A1200, which has
a 68030.  On the 060-based machine, it seems that if I type really
slowly (<1 CPS) the keyboard autorepeat/hang doesn't occur, if that
helps. :)  When it does occur, it does eventually start responding
again, after perhaps 10 minutes or so.  Could it be related to the CIA
timer issues discussed recently on this list?  BTW, the previous working
installation I mentioned was actually NetBSD 1.6, not 1.3.  Sorry about
that. :)

At one point, I found that the installer script was failing with a
syntax error just after asking whether to configure the network.  It
turns out the miniroot filesystem image was still being corrupted, even
with MaxTransfer=0x01fe00, so I set it even lower, to 0xfe00 (I have
read that CompactFlash drives may be particularly sensitive to this
parameter).  This seems to have (actually) fixed it, as I was able to
run a full system installation (on my 030 A1200) successfully.  I'm now
using this image to boot the 060 machine.

Should the NetBSD/amiga installation notes include some more information
about MaxTransfer?  It seems like a potentially important issue.


Some other thoughts:

It might be nice to have an uncompressed miniroot image on the NetBSD
CD, in the misc directory, just to make getting it onto the drive for
installation a bit easier (e.g. for noobs). ;)  It would also make the
file checksums more meaningful - being on the actual data rather than a
gzipped copy.  I'm not sure if the data corruption I was seeing was
occurring while un-gzipping and/or using xstreamtodev.

Also, would it be reasonable for the loadbsd program to print some basic
usage information when it runs?  I would have loved to know about the -b
option while I was troubleshooting this! :)

Oh, one more thing: is the -A (AGA/scandoubled video) kernel option
really safe/sensible to enable by default?  I know some systems are
attached to monitors that won't do PAL or NTSC, but equally some may
_only_ do PAL/NTSC!  Also, startx/Xamiga produced a corrupt display when
the system was booted with -A (kind of wrapped horizontally and with a
checkerboard pattern and moving noise; without -A it looked fine).

Thanks again; I'm learning useful stuff here. :)
Chris