Getting into Open Firmware is done by holding down
the Option-Command-O-F key combination (Option, Command, "O", and "F", all
at once.)  Hold these four down from power up until open firmware gives
you a prompt.

On an 8500, this may mean a serial console, etc. etc.

-dgl-

>     I'm installing bsd on my 8500 (without X Windows) for use as a 
>server and also a firewall machine but I am getting hung up on a few 
>things (probably more than I know).
>   One thing is that since I had the os installed and set up the hard 
>drive and it allowed me to boot onto the hard drive, I assumed I was 
>good to go and stopped the computer from booting into open firmware 
>every time.  This is bad because my drive actually takes too long to 
>spin up from a cold boot.  So the first question is how do I get back 
>into the firmware to set the waiting time for the drive to show up?
>   The second question has to do with what to do once I am actually in.  
>I am at the point where it says that "/etc/rc.conf is not configured.  
>Multi-user boot aborted.
>Enter path name of shell or RETURN for sh:"
>
>   After hitting return here, I don't seem to be able to do anything.  
>I've tried ls, changing directories date, time, , whatever other simple 
>unix commands I know or have looked through lists of.  All I seem to get 
>in response is, for example "LS: not found".
>
>   Ok, did finally find that I could hit control d to get out of sh.  
>But while I was in there I could do no normal commands I could find.  
>Any ideas here?  What are other shells I could try and the normal path I 
>would use to get into these?
>
>Thanks in advance to anybody with ideas on this.  Ian
>
>
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