Subject: Re: Minor bugs and a few questions
To: 'port-mac68k@netbsd.org' <port-mac68k@netbsd.org>
From: Joel Rees <joel_rees@sannet.ne.jp>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 03/04/2004 11:28:31
On 2004/03/04, at 5:43, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I've just finished installing 1.6.1 on a LC 475.  There were a few
> minor nits during the installation, I thought I'd share them with you.
>
> I've found the multiple booters present on the CD to be confusing.  It
> should be documented that ELF kernels will only boot with the 2.0
> booter.
>
> While sysinst is documented to work with 6 MB of memory, and the
> machine has 8MB, the installation would crash with gzip running out of
> memory when installing sets.  The solution was to escape to the shell
> and swapon manually.  I guess that sysinst should do that automa-
> tically, or at least the procedure should be documented.
>
> (Providing a smaller installation kernel would also be helpful.  Do
> people really install from AFS or to LFS?)

from AFS, at least, yes.

But RAM used to be cheap. I'd say you'd want to weigh the cost of 
paring down the kernel against the cost of some bigger RAM on eBay. The 
LC 475 can accept up to a 32 MB SIMM in the socket.

> Any chance to get the floppy to work?  The iwm driver is giving up
> with ``unknown chipset (-77)''.

The fact that any iwm works at all with *NIX is something of a miracle. 
Woz is a genius, but they let him optimize those controllers way too 
much, from what I understand. The chips require too much CPU 
interaction. Even if you could get Apple to part with the docs, you're 
still fighting an uphill timing battle on a true multi-tasking OS.

(Kudos to whoever has been working on those, BTW.)