On Dec 22, 2004, at 8:35 AM, Bill Lovett wrote:

> Hi everybody. I'm looking for some open firmware advice-- I've got a
> 9600/350 that doesn't want to boot into the NetBSD 2 installer.
>
> I've used System Disk to get into OF easily enough, and I've been
> following the instructions in the manual with regard to setting the
> boot device. If I try to boot from the scsi cdrom, the machine
> hangs. I can hear the drive spin up, however.
>
> I also tried booting from floppy. There I can get slightly further-- I
> get a read timeout just after stage 2 begins. Have tried 2 disks, so
> I don't believe it's a media failure.

I can't boot the 2.0 ISO either, but I was able to install it fine
using the floppy disks.  OF is very picky about having good disks.
I only got rid of the read timeouts when I thoroughly cleaned out
my floppy drive with a can of air and did a low-level format of my
floppies.  And even then, I had to go through several floppies to
find one that would work.  If you have old floppies especially, it
actually is very likely that it is a media failure.  Keep trying
would be my advice.

In the meantime, they should have fixed the boot loader on the ISO
by the 2.0.1 or 2.1 release.

Chaz McGarvey
http://www.brokenzipper.com