Quoting James Robinson <jmrobinson3@verizon.net>:

> Hi Group.....
> 1) I have NetBsd booting to the Installboot on my IP20 with the RS4000
> board in it. ( also tried my RS 4X00 board) and the problem is that the
> keyboard need to be kit about 50-70 time before it will take the key.
> The keyboard works fine under that ARC console and the diag's.... I did
> get one image to install to the HD, and when the box booted to a login
> prompt, it did the same thing......
> Any Ideas?

Unfortunately, no.

Could you provide a dmesg? I'm curious as to whether the zs_kbd driver  
is attaching as console or ARCS is being used to get the input. I'm  
fuzzy as to what exactly may be going on, but if the zs_kbd driver is  
attaching, but is not being used as console, it may be servicing the  
keyboard's serial interface instead of ARCS. Perhaps for some reason  
ARCS is able to see a keystroke every once in a (apparently long) while.

See http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-sgimips/2006/10/30/0003.html

> 2) I tried to swap the main CPU boards and noticed that the MAC address
> was the same. Does the MAC address get stored on the CPU board or is it
> stored somewhere else?

The MAC address is stored on an EEPROM that lives on the backplane. If  
you remove the mainboard and graphics, you may be able to spot it.  
It's an NM93CS56, or something similar.

I believe that the CPU daughtercards also have an EEPROM of similar  
make, but what they contain, I don't know.

> 3) I have a tool-chain on my FC6 linux box, Do I need to compile little
> Endien or Big? Does it really matter?

The target architecture must be big-endian. If it still works properly  
on Linux, the build.sh tool in the root of the src directory should be  
able to do the toolchain setup magic for you:
     ./build.sh -m sgimips -T /path/to/tooldir tools

Steve