Hi Dusty

Quite a few people are running EBSA 285 and closely related systems (some
custom hardware too).

Fortunately for me, I stepped into a "working" system and did not have to
get the system going from scratch.

One thing you will need is a bootloader. I'm not aware of any that are
"free" but I could be wrong. Mark Brinicombe and Bruce Martin (who both
monitor this list) may be able to advise you w.r.t. bootloaders.

Also, you can cross compile a kernel if no binary is available (although
there should be a binary somewhere??). Do you have another NetBSD system
(i386 maybe). You could use that to cross compile a kernel and NFS serve a
filesystem to get you started. However, the bootloader will need to come
first.

To cross compile you will need to build the appropriate cross compile
toolchain.

> should also ask if it is possible to run a diskless system, with only a
ramdisk
> and/or flash filesystem.

Yes. You can run purely from flash/ram. I'm busy with that at the moment
(see my earlier posts).Obviously you are somewhat limited with what apps you
can include (sizewise).

As far as ethernet cards go (for NFS mounts) I've successfully used ne2000
and Dec tulip. Intel FXP (etherexpress) has driver problems that have not
been fully addressed. As for the rest of the ethers, I have no idea....

>Also, can I use angel to load the kernel into RAM?
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
This should be possible but maybe quite tricky. Angel probably does not set
things up the way NetBSD expects (e.g. 21285 settings) and NetBSD also
expects a boot parameters structure. It may be possible to modify Angel to
comply but could take you a while. Essentially we come back to the
bootloader...

Hope I haven't discouraged you :-)

Cheers
David