NetBSD 9.3 and 7.2 on a PowerBook 170

[Stan Johnson <userm57%yahoo.com@localhost>]

Hello,

I'm trying to install NetBSD 9.3 on a PowerBook 170. It has 8 MiB memory
and an 18 GB external disk (Seagate ST318404LW). The failed internal
disk along with its ribbon cable have been removed. I think the hardware
is reasonably stable (Mac OS 7.5.5 runs and Debian SID boots to
multiuser with a customized Linux 6.0.9 kernel).

My first preference would have been to use the Traditional Method for
installing NetBSD, though that appears to no longer be supported (Mkfs
in Mac OS creates an ffs filesystem that appears to be too old). I would
have preferred the Traditional Method so that I could run the whole
installation to the external disk from a much faster system (e.g. a
PowerBook Lombard).

On the PB-170, after failing the Traditional Method, I tried installing
from CD using the NETBSD installation kernel (9.3), which hung after
logging two rejected commands while probing the external disk. Next, the
NETBSDSBC installation kernel hung after saying that the date was likely
not read correctly from PRAM (there were no errors reported while
probing the Seagate disk).

Attempting a CD-based installation on a PB-550c, the 9.3 NETBSD
installation kernel crashed; the NETBSDSBC kernel booted but crashed
sometime during the installation. The PB-550c currently has NetBSD 8.2
installed.

The above errors with 9.3 are repeatable. Next, I tried intalling 7.2
from CD on the PB-170; the NETBSDSBC installation kernel hung and the
NETBSD kernel crashed with an illegal instruction error.

I was able to install NetBSD 1.6.2 successfully on the PB-170 using the
Traditional Method, and it booted, but the magic number on the Root
filesystem was updated when fsck was first run from NetBSD, preventing
subsequent boots.

I would have attached a serial console log for my attempted 9.3
installation on the PB-170, but I don't know how to do that in NetBSD.

thanks for any suggestions

-Stan Johnson