On Apr 4,  4:26pm, Richard Rauch wrote:
>On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 05:06:50PM -0400, Steve Rumble wrote:
> [...]
>> I have no experience with the machines, but I would assume that
>> they would not run a default NetBSD/i386 kernel.
>
>That's what I was beginning to suspect.

I did play with one of these guys a couple of years ago.

SGI has a web page about putting Linux on it, but it's pretty old.
There's also a SourceForge page that has some of the necessary binaries.

I don't recall all what I did, but some of it involved updating the
firmware image, creating a custom install CD, and playing with boot
parameters to get it first to boot the install CD and install, and
again to get it to boot off the hard disk.

The early Linux kernel was somewhat flaky.  Colors wouldn't render
quite right (due to limited bitmap space), and heavy use of the
ethernet would cause the machine to hang.  Current kernels are
supposed to have better support for the machine, but I haven't had
one to play with for a long time, so I couldn't attest to that.

I think it's safe to say that there's no way NetBSD will run on it.

~Steve


-- 
Steve Allen - wormey@eskimo.com   http://www.eskimo.com/~wormey/ 

Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
without looking to see whether the seeds move.

Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly.  
It just happens to be selective about who it makes friends with.
	-Kyle Hearn  <kyle@intex.net>

Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
hole in his head.