On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Greg Earle wrote:

> I've got a G3 266 D/T, currently running Rhapsody DR2 and Allegro 8.5b2c2.
> 
> Before I download the 980715.fs boot floppy image and try the "Pigs with wings"
> act with it, a couple of questions:
> 
> (1) I have 160 Mb of RAM (damn I love nearly $1/Mb RAM prices) - the stock 32
>     Mb SDRAM DIMM and an added 128 Mb DIMM.  Would I need to remove the 128 Mb
>     DIMM to test it out?  (I'm rather loathe to do that)

Quite possibly you'll have to pull the DIMM. The memory problem is not
well understood at present AFAIK. I don't know if it's that the machine
has too much RAM, or that it has two DIMM's. The only thing I've heard on
the linuxppc list is that you have to pull memory to get OF to work.

You might get lucky and be able to boot things with the magic incantation
I used last night to get things to boot (boot, eject, boot) on my 64 MB
system.

You might also get lucky and discover that removing the 32 MB DIMM is
enough, though I don't expect it. :-)

I'd ask the linuxppc folks more (like whom can we beat up at Apple), but
the mailing list seems sick. I've not received a message in two days. :-(

> (2) I can get the G3 into Open Firmware on the console video which currently
>     goes to an Apple 16" monitor.  Can I use that for the NetBSD/macppc
>     floppy boot process, or do I have to have a serial console attached?
>     I don't really have the means to hook up anything to the serial port for
>     an external console, so I was sorta hoping I wouldn't need to use one.

Yes. All the tests I did last night used the video console. It's fine, and
seems to be the default for G3's. :-)

The only problem is that macppc doesn't support any useful I/O devices.
The keyboard, serial ports, and video are the only things which come up. I
gather that IDE support is in the works, but not there yet.

It is cool, though. :-)

Take care,

Bill