> 
> since netbsd is so cool, i decided to take the plunge and try it on our 040
> macs at home. :-)

That's the way we'll really make progress. If you have only one machine,
you can't do much if it doesn't work. But if you have a working machine as
a base, then you can get farther.

> here's the results. please forgive me for saying stupid things. I haven't a
> clue about all the technicalities. if you talk about miniroots and serial
> consoles i'll just read your mail and say 'huh?'. so please explain
> anything i'm likely to find weird.

Just to fill in, a miniroot is where you build a ram disk, and put the
kernel and a filesystem on it. The advantage is that you can bring the
system up w/o disks (and SCSI drivers!), but then you can't do much
more. What we might eventually go to is you bring up a miniroot for
instalation, and then use unix to set up your system. Then as things
are ready, you switch the root partition to the real hard disk, and
away you go!

Serial console is where the console (the tty that gets all the boot
messages and the one which is used in single user mode) is on
a serial port, rather than on the keyboard. Advantages are: works
w/o ADB support, and could work remotely.

[snipped probelm reports as I can't help much]

> A few points and questions.
> - I've seen people mention adb problems in connection with the 040 models.
> So maybe this is a common problem.

Yes, as the hardware's different (on some).

> - *do* caches make a diffs? the quadra makes a fuss if i turn them off.
> - why does the 475 get virtually nowhere? does it really require the FPU?

I'd expect it to get farther than it did, and I thought GENERIC#47 had
FPE in it, but I could be wrong.

> - does b/w make a diffs? i booted the quadra with both b/w on and in 256
> color mode. It booted up to the same point in both modes, so is it really
> important that it be set to b/w mode?

Not to boot, but dt and X only work in b/w (though color support is
coming).

> - my big suspect: I tried booting them with netbsd 1.1 and the kernel is
> generic #47. Don't criticise me immediately for this, i acted to the best
> of my knowledge. This setup works 100% on my se/30. If i must use different
> things for the 040 boxes, fine, but please tell me precisley *what* and
> precisely where to get them.

Scott and Allen will know more, but I think it's more that you need newer
thing to support 040's well, not that they will need to be different
(the SE/30 should be fine with the newer kernels).

Take care,

Bill