Subject: Re: PowerBook 160s
To: None <ADAMGOOD@delphi.com>
From: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@loki.stanford.edu>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 05/19/1996 16:14:35
> 
> Hi all,

Howdy!

[Description of PB 160 wowes snipped]

> So, my questions are:
> 
> 1) Is it possible to run any avaiable kernel on the 160 (with a serial boot
> or otherwise?)
> 
> 2) If it is possible, why can't I seem to make it work?

I don't know.

> 3) Is there a way to test kernels from the Mac partition w/o downloading
> the whole distribution or setting up an AUX partition (if none of the kernels
> will even work, I don't want to go through the trouble of doing this)?

Yes! The booter has an option to read the kernel from a MacOS partition.
So you can get all the way through to the end of kernel initialization
before your lack of NetBSD partition becomes a problem. This feature
is there exactly for situations like yours.

> 4) If it is not already possible, is any one working on kernel support for the
> 100 series PBs (even those w/o FPU)?  What about native ADB so it wouldn't
> need the serial boot?

Most kernels now have FPE in them, so it's a matter of dealing with
other parts of the IO system, like the SCSI chip and the ADB system.

> 5) This is a non-sequitor, but I've wondered for a long time; what are "sups?"
> (Obviously, I'm not an old school BSD hack but everyone always talks about
> everything being "supped" from this or that site).  I assume it stands for
> suppliments or something like that, but is there a more complete definition
> that I'm missing?

I don't know what sup stands for, but I'd bet it's something like
"Software Update Protocall". It's a way for your computer to log into
a server and request all of the files (in a particular collection)
which have changed since the last time you updated your source.

It's a way we can keep up-to-date with the source changes in the
master NetBSD tree.

Take care,

Bill