On Thu, 22 May 2003, Steve Rumble wrote:

>On Thu, 22 May 2003 12:45:51 +0100 (BST)
>Christian Smith <csmith@micromuse.com> wrote:
>
>> By the inability to read the MAC address from sq0, I guess this kernel
>> is not ethernet capable, hence my failure to boot with NFS root?
>
>It's certainly ethernet capable, but I mustn't have mentioned the lack
>of nvram support and its ramifications. The ARCS prom SGIs can read the
>mac address using arcbios support. The IP12 is not such a machine and
>that kernel is from before such a time as I'd written the eeprom
>code. I did complete it just last weekend, however. Recent source is
>available at:
>http://www.cataclysmic.org/sgimips/mips_sgimips-20030518-IP12-IP20.tar.gz
>I'll also throw a new IP12 kernel up there
>(www.cataclysmic.org/sgimips/) as well as a 1.6T userland build; just
>check the dates.

A bit cheeky, but could you also upload an ECOFF binary as well, as I 
don't currently have a build environment set up to build and convert the 
kernel myself.

>
>Both systems can boot to a disk-based system, however a bootloader
>doesn't exist for IP12. I've heard that the sgi volume header is around
>2 megabytes, so one could probably just squeeze a kernel in there pretty
>easily. I haven't yet experimented with that. It's certainly no solution
>as a very minimal kernel still occupies 1.6 megabytes.

I've dug out a spare disk I can trash, which I did a test install of Irix 
5.3 on last night, and intend to use with netbsd.

How did you install netbsd to the disk? Did you do a net based install 
having already partitioned the disk with fx? I noticed fx can mark 
partitions as various types. Or can disklabel already handle SGI labels?

>
>Unforunately, my IP12 just decided to kick the bucket days after the
>clock battery on my IP20 gave out and needed replacing. The
>IP12-specific support is done, however, and I can continue unabated on
>its R4k brother. That said, the latest kernel I've uploaded should work
>but I've not tested it.
>
>Cheers,
>-Steve
>

Christian

-- 
"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him." -John Morley

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