Hi,

since I've recently upgraded my own machine and since I've seen a
few queries about the availability of a 1.3_ALPHA snapshot, I
decided to make one myself and make it available.  I've tried
contacting the port masters to get their reaction to me doing
this, but so far I've not had a reply, so take this snapshot for
what it is: totally unofficial, no guarantees etc. etc.

The snapshot is available from

   ftp://ftp.ntnu.no/pub/NetBSD/i386-1.3_ALPHA/

Find below the README file from that directory.

Hope you find this useful.

- H=E5vard

------------------------------

This is an unofficial snapshot of NetBSD 1.3_ALPHA for the i386
platform.  The snapshot has been created from sources dated Oct 30
1997 (except for /sys/compat/svr4/svr4_misc.c which is from Oct 31).

The purpose of this snapshot is to jump-start folks who are eager to
test 1.3_ALPHA, and the hope is that this can act as a stepping stone
in that direction.

The format of the distribution is "minimal" -- i.e. I've not split up
the tar files in little pieces, and there's not much documentation
outside of the images.  The assumption is that if you get this
distribution you know what you're doing.

The subdirectories are:

Tarfiles/	The usual distribution sets

floppy/ 	A single 1.44M floppy image.  No 1.2M floppy image
		this time around, but one (without PCMCIA) can
		probably be constructed if there is a need.

		The INSTALL kernel on this boot floppy is compiled
		with DDB, DIAGNOSTIC and DEBUG, so that if there's a
		problem you have a chance to look around to see what
		may be the reason.

kernel/		A GENERIC kernel.

This particular snapshot has had only light testing by me, so I make
no guarantees about this software.

I will however add that I have at least booted the floppy on my
laptop, and I've also installed the GENERIC kernel together with the
tarballs on another machine, and I'm currently running the binaries on
my own PC-workstation, so there is at least some hope this stuff will
work well enough to get you going.


Regards and good luck testing!

Havard.Eidnes@runit.sintef.no