"Amitai Schlair" <schmonz@schmonz.com> wrote:

> I'm trying to install NetBSD 1.6_RC2 on a friend's 233MHz beige G3 (OF
> 2.0f1). However, the install kernel never finishes booting. Here's
what the
> screen looks like:
>
> -----
> console keyboard type: ADB
> [ netbsd ELF symbol table not valid ]
> [ no symbol table formats found ]
> Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002
>     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 1.6_RC2 (GENERIC_MD) #0: Sun Sep  1 20:04:55 UTC 2002
>
>
autobuild@tgm.daemon.org:/autobuild/macppc/OBJ/autobuild/src/sys/arch/ma
cppc
> /compile/GENERIC_MD
> total memory = 128 MB
> avail memory = 109 MB
> using 1664 buffers containing 6656 KB of memory
> -----
>
> It hangs there.

I've gotten a little further:

The above happened when netbooting. (I first tried booting from floppy,
but the floppy drive is dodgy.)

Thinking it might be a 1.6-ish problem, I downloaded and tried
netbooting the install kernel from each of the snapshots on
ftp.netbsd.org. None of them fared any better.

Thinking it might be a netboot-related problem, I found my NetBSD
Mission 1.5 CD. It booted and installed!

I figured that now that I've got a partition-zero bootloader and a
working system, I can upgrade to 1.6 from there. However, I'm stuck on
the ages-old problem of booting from a beige G3's internal ATA drive.
Without fail, it says "can't LOAD from this device". The hard disk
doesn't sound spun up, so I can't blame OF for not being able to boot
from it.

I've tried everything I found in the list archive. boot-device is
"ide/disk@0:0"; boot-file is "netbsd". I can provide full printenv
output if that's helpful.

I keep thinking how much fun it'll be when this finally works. Please
help me get there. :-)

- Amitai