> 	What is the status of Sun4m architecture support in the
> latest NetBSD-current tree? It looks to me like it's in the source,
> but I don't see bootstrapping kernel binaries anywhere that one
> could use to actually get a system up and running.

It could not be easier.

NetBSD/sparc has a *major* advantage over both SunOS and Solaris
on the SPARC platform. A suitable kernel will run correctly on
sun4, sun4c and sun4m. The boot blocks for the 4c and 4m are the
same, and only need the first 32 bytes stripped for the sun4
architechture.

What this means is that you can use exaclty the same hard disk between
sun4c and sun4m. On the supported models at least.

Today I installed a SS20/71 (75Mhz, 1Mb Cache, 4Gb Disk, 320Mb RAM) SPARC
compatible in < 1 hour with a SunOS 4.1.4 CDROM and an Ethernet connection.

Basically, you need to get a clean disk partition (which can be done from
miniroot) and then install all the binaries (including kernel). For the
first boot you can only use the SunOS boot blocks (AFAIK) so that you can
the boot the /netbsd kernel and run the native installboot program. Then
convert the file system to the new (wider inode elements) form. Reboot,
and you have a native NetBSD/sparc without *any* Sun binaries.

BTW Don't forget with larger disks that the SunOS boot blocks can only
boot from a miniroot completely contained in the first 2Gb of the disk.
I made this mistake :)

At some stage, if time permits, I will automate all this as much
as possible for our internal use and also hope to make the
notes/scripts etc available.

Regards,
-- 
Peter Galbavy                                           peter@wonderland.org
@ Home                                                 phone://44/973/499465
in Wonderland                              http://www.wonderland.org/~peter/
                               snail://UK/NW1_6LE/London/21_Harewood_Avenue/