Re: NetBSD 9.3 and Amiga loadbsd

[Roc Vallès <vallesroc%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hi Carlos,

My current Amiga setup is not physically comfortable to type on. This
will improve at some point, but in the meantime, if I can use my main
workstation instead to do the installation (via serial port), that's
much more convenient.

Once netbsd is running and has network proper, ssh's crypto isn't the
fastest on my Amiga (A1200 with blizzard 1230mkIV, 68030, 128M fast32)
but it is usable, so serial isn't as necessary. However, it is clearly
lower latency than ssh, so it does get used.

Similarly, my AmigaOS's s:user-startup does open a shell to a TCP
connection to my workstation upon boot, so I can also use that w/o
touching the amiga, or looking at its video output. (for which I use
and recommend the OSSC or "Open Source Scan Converter"). Newcli AUX:
is also an option (amigashell on the serial), but I prefer to have the
serial port free for pyamigadebug/AmigaXfer development.

As an added random plug, AmigaXfer is gaining hard disk support
sometime soon. On the non-GUI side, it's already working. I can e.g.
export the hard disk as a NBD:
https://gist.github.com/rvalles/5b783a157df3af694ca72a67fd8a00f7

In a Netbsd context, having GUI for the hdd functionality could be
useful to e.g. write the install image to the swap partition (which I
can already do quite easily w/o GUI). It'll be a decent stopgap until
I can look into how to build xstreamtodev (shipped in netbsd tools
dir) and then try and fix it for TD64 and/or NSD support. That tool
will currently happily clobber data in the partitions at the first 4GB
of the disk, when telling it to write the install image to anything
that crosses the 4GB boundary. That's definitely not very good to
have. Still, I'd rather wait until loadbsd is handled before I
consider starting work on that; I already have too many personal
projects in flight as it is.

Regards,
Roc

On Fri, 26 Aug 2022 at 19:48, Carlos Milán Figueredo
<cmilanf%hispamsx.org@localhost> wrote:
>
> > De: port-amiga-owner%NetBSD.org@localhost <port-amiga-owner%NetBSD.org@localhost> En nombre
> > de Roc Vallès
> > Enviado el: miércoles, 24 de agosto de 2022 2:18
>
> > I did manage to coerce it to build and make it so others can build it,
> > too: https://github.com/rvalles/netbsd_amiga_loadbsd_pleasebuild
>
> Thank you for the work! I am curious: what kind of use do you give to the serial console? I guess it is useful to operate the Amiga remotely from a terminal program or to debug video issues.
>
> Regards,
> Carlos
>
> Carlos Milán Figueredo | HispaMSX System Operator | http://www.hispamsx.org | telnet://bbs.hispamsx.org | https://calnus.com