> 
> On Sun, 17 Jan 1999, Robert D. Keys wrote:
> 
> > So, the question arises..... is it possible to boot a netbsd onto this
> > ancient sparc box FROM TAPE, that will fit on a pair of 60mb mfm drives?
> 
> Should be no problem, although your /usr is going to be extremely
> tight.  Put root (30 MB) and swap (30 MB) on the first drive (/var
> will be on your root partition),a nd make the entire second drive
> /usr. base.tgz will install just fine, and I think you'll also be
> able to fit comp.tgz. I wouldn't give much hope for putting manual
> pages or other extra stuff on that disk, though.

I got to playing with the beast, and decided discretion was the better
part of valor, and pulled the pair of mfm drives out and dropped in a
small quantum scsi drive of 240mb capacity.  Then I outfitted an old
shoebox with a pair of 669mb drives and hung that on the exterior
scsi line.  It comes up fine on the sun3 port.  Maybe tonight I will
change CPU's and try the sparc port again.  The first time I tried
it the tape went into neverneverland in the drivers and I have not
yet figured out why.  Maybe tonight it will work better.

We still need a sparc tapeboot of some kind.  I have to use the
sunos tape to boot the beast and then manually dd the miniroot on
via tape, and then ftp the rest after the initial install.  Crude,
but a real tapeboot like the sun3 port would be very nice on the
sun4/sparc port if that is easy for anyone to do.  I need a working
tape boot block and a working tape kernel(?), and it might work.
Anyone have a sun4 tape boot block and a for sure kernel compiled
that will read the old sun4 tape systems on dinosaur sparc?

Bob