I'm trying to get NetBSD installed on my home G4, but I don't have any
other machine to netboot/netroot it from... from what i've seen here it
looks like there is at least preliminary support for this hardware, but i
can't even get the installer to boot...

the install docs seem pretty spotty on how to boot a system without a
floppy drive, so what I'm doing is this - I've got 2 zip disks, one with
ofwboot.elf, netbsd, and netbsd.md from the 20000205 snaps at the (plain
old HFS) volume root, and the other with boot.fs from the same snapshot
writen onto it using SunTar (I'm guessing this filesystem contains
a minimal system and sysinst to complete the install)...

if I boot the regular kernel directly from OF ("boot zip:,netbsd") the
kernel comes up fine untill it stops at

boot device: <unknown>
root device:

whatever i do here it responds by going

use one of: halt
root device:

while being able to boot and halt the kernel is a start, i was sorta
hoping for more :)

a message in this list archive a few months back implied i needed to be
booting the netbsd.md kernel to use the ramdisk based installer (i
couldn't find any mention of this in the INSTALL notes, they talked only
about the generic "netbsd" kernel). when i try to do this, even less
happens -

0> boot zip:,netbsd.md load-size=0 adler32=1

 LOAD-SIZE is too small
 ok
0>

where i type "boot zip:,netbsd.md" and the "load-size=0 adler32=1" is
tacked on the end of the line by OF when i hit return.

if I try and boot the boot.fs image directly with "boot zip:" or
"boot zip:0" i get a message about "LOAD (noninterposed) not supported"
followed by the same "LOAD-SIZE is to small" thing.

i also can't manage to make ofwboot.elf find any kernel - it loads fine,
displays it's banner, then complains that it can't find

{long_OF_path_to_my_zip}:0,/netbsd


is what i'm trying to do (currently) impossible?? am i missing something
really obvious??

any tips would be greatly appreciated