I have generated a new NetBSD/sgimips release distribution available
immediately.

The first part of the instructions I've assembled for my release follows.

-scott

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Last updated: February 9, 2002

NOTES about the 20020209 distribution:

o       A screen display of the distribution packages that should 
        be installed with this release is exhibited at the bottom
        of this document under APPENDIX A.
o       With the L2 cache disabled on the R5000 INDY (details towards
        the bottom of this document) the R4400 is noticeably faster
        than the R5000, but not significantly.
o       Do note that the sample outputs are from an older snapshot,
        so your output will differ somewhat--particularly with respect
        to the kernel version identification.
o       There is no X built for the sgimips platform.

CAVEATS:

o	The ecoff boot block and kernels have not been tested.  Rumour
	has it that ecoff still doesn't work.  If you are able to test
	on an ecoff system, please contact me.

o       The NetBSD sysinst tool (the menu-driven installation program)
        has a bug -- when specifying "-1" to use the rest of the disk
        for a partition size, it will simply respond with the size:
        prompt again.  A way to work around this is to specify a
        larger number than the actual remaining space.  999999M (999999
        megabytes) is (currently) an easy one.

o       PLEASE NOTE -- THIS DISTRIBUTION APPLIES TO INDY ONLY
        This distribution has been tested on the INDY R4400, R4600 and
        R5000 machines with between 32MB and 128MB of memory.

        The O2 support is broken in the NetBSD/sgimips port right now.  
        I now have an O2 available, but attempts to boot it thus far 
        haven't been fruitful.

o       For some reason, the PAGEUP and PAGEDOWN keys don't work in
        the timezone selection menu.  I'll look into this.  If you
        experience this, use CTRL-P for down and CTRL-N for up.

Scott G. Taylor -- sgimips @ mrynet . com (remove the spaces :)
        (wouldn't it be neat if the SPAM harvesters picked up
         and used the following? hostmaster@ftc.gov :)

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NetBSD/sgimips *TEST* Installation Images and Procedures

 All paths are relative to 
ftp.mrynet.com:/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.5.2-sgimips/INDY/snapshot-YYYYMMDD
 where:
        YYYYMMDD is a specific snapshot date

Associated documentation (this file) for each snapshot is located at
ftp.mrynet.com:/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.5.2-sgimips/INDY/INDY.INSTALLATION.YYYYMMDD.txt

It is presumed that the reader has experience installing NetBSD
already.  Since this is only an initial exposure of the sysinst(8)
tool and RELEASE generation for installation images, no effort has
been made to fully document typical NetBSD installation procedures.

This is a preliminary release test for NetBSD/sgimips from source
dates indicated by the snapshot-YYYYMMDD directory name.

Before proceeding with any of the following installation attempts,
it should be noted that the NetBSD/sgimips port still only works over
serial line for installations--no graphics console is available
as of yet.  It is important to note that I have had difficulties
running an INDY serial console over 9600 baud -- a panic can result
when outputting large amounts of data.  I recommend you stick with 
9600 baud for this installation.

The following installtion methods are (or will) be addressed here:

1. Installing NetBSD/sgimips via bootp - netboot kernel with RAM filesystem
2. Installing NetBSD/sgimips via bootable CD
3. Installing NetBSD/sgimips via bootp - netboot kernel and NFS filesystem
4. (COMING SOON) Installing NetBSD/sgimips via a helper disk (aka dd(1) image)
        (helper disks are proving a bit interesting.  Still investigating.)
5. (ABANDONED) Installing NetBSD/sgimips via floppy
6. (COMING SOON) Installing NetBSD/sgimips via tape

Steps 1, 2 and 3 were all tested on the INDY R4400, R4600 and R5000 platforms.

In general, these steps will describe the boot process leading up to the
main NetBSD installation screen.  For further instruction, I recommend
referring to one of the other NetBSD port's INSTALL documents.  Most
any one can be used.  I referred mostly to the "pmax" port's document
while doing my work.

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