Hi there,

as the hpcmips port is making some good progress, I wanted to share my recent
experiences:

I have my z50 since a few months, but my first attempts to run NetBSD on it
where hindered by the low-quality Compact Flash card I have.  I had to swap
the card two times to get one which actually works.

Installation worked as expected, although the kernel in the snapshot from
March 15th has a real slow console text driver.  The good news is:  The
console driver in -current is a lot faster, fast enough to be almost fully
satisfactory.  One remaining problem is the buffering which occurs when a lot
of data is written to the screen.  The current driver scrolls fast, but
scrolling still takes time.  If a lot of data is output in a big chunk, the
system only responds when the data is fully output, Ctrl-O or Ctrl-C does not
work.  I guess that nobody is going to care enough when X is ready, but at the
moment it is annoying.

Apart from that, NetBSD/hpcmips is running pretty fine on the z50 and makes
the device the coolest terminal I ever had.  Also, all of the PCMCIA cards I
wanted to try simply work, the coolest being a WaveLAN card which converts the
z50 into a secure wireless terminal.  I love it.

I have found that with a Compact Flash based system, union mounts can be put
to good use.  On my z50, I only have a basic installation of NetBSD (and perl
and a few other goodies I want to have for entertainment on my mobile
terminal), and when I have one of my larger machines within reach, I union
mount a full installation of NetBSD/hpcmips under the limited /usr I have on
the compact flash.

All in all, let me say "thanks" to the developers of NetBSD/hpcmips.  This is
a slick platform to work on, and you are doing a great job.

Cheers,
Hans

-- 
                                       finger hans@huebner.org for details