> 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.

Well, just for fun I left the 2 DIMMs installed as-is and got this:

>> NetBSD/macppc OpenFirmware Boot, Revision 1.1
>> (tsubai@kanea, Tue Jul 14 20:48:02 JST 1998)
bad partition number, using 0open ide0/@0:6,mach_kernel/netbsd: Input/output \
error
Boot:

[I suspect this is because Rhapsody diddled the Open Firmware "boot-file"
 variable ... it also changed "boot-device" from "/APPL,ROM" to "ide0/@0:0"
 and "load-base" from "4000" to "600000", and it enabled the nvramrc ... ]

So I then typed "netbsd" and it returned

Boot: netbsd
no active packageBooting fd/netbsd
2660384@0x100000+140700@0x389820	[Screen switched to white-on-black now]
 start=0x1000000

Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998
    The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
    The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.

NetBSD 1.3F (FLOPPY) #1: Wed Jul 15 13:04:23 JST 1998
    tsubai@kanea:/c/0711/src/sys/arch/macpppc/compile/FLOPPY
CPU: Version 8 (Revision 202)
real mem = 167772160
avail mem = 156680192
using 800 buffers containing 3276800 bytes of memory
mainbus0 (root)
cpu at mainbus0
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0
pci0: i/o enabled, memory enabled
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0
pchb0: vendor 0x1057 product 0x0002 (rev. 0x40)
obio0 at pci0 dev 16 function 0: addr 0xf3000000
mesh at obio0 offset 0x10000 not configured
bmac at obio0 offset 0x11000 not configured
zsc0 at obio0 offset 0x13000: irq 15,16
zstty0 at zsc0 channel 0
zstty1 at zsc0 channel 1
davbus at obio0 offset 0x14000 not configured
swim3 at obio0 offset 0x15000 not configured
nvram0 at obio0 offset 0x60000
ide at obio0 offset 0x20000 not configured
ide at obio0 offset 0x21000 not configured
adb0 at obio0 offset 0x16000 irq 18
adb: extended keyboard at 2
adb: extended mouse <@200> 1-button 200 dpi mouse at 3
grfati0 at pci0 dev 18 function 0
grf0 at grfati0
ite0 at grf0
md0: internal 1536K image area
boot device: <unknown>
root on md0a dumps on md0b
WARNING: clock gained 9 days -- CHECK AND RESET THE DATE!
root file system type: ffs
# halt
syncing disks... done
halted

EXIT called ok
0 > ok
0 > 

TSUBAI YOU ARE A GOD!!!!!   hehe.  :-)

So much for the "Won't boot with 160 Mb installed" problem, eh?

(What does the "no active package" that came out right after "Boot: " mean?)

The keyboard works, the console-on-Apple-monitor works, wow I'm stoked!!!  :-)

I don't really want to touch my existing 4 Gb IDE disk setup yet (I know I
can't anyway, just saying ... ), so ... Ethernet.  I have a big slice of a
4 Gb Barracuda on this SPARCstation that would love to host an NFS root
partition & userland ... but don't know much about the built-in Ethernet on
the G3.  A working built-in Ethernet driver that would allow me to try running
diskless would be just great!

	- Greg