Yes:
ok probe-scsi
Target 0
Unit 0 Disk UNISYS U1545 ST12550N 280900460958Copyright (c) 1994 Seagate All rights reserved 0000
Target 6
Unit 0 Removable Read Only device DEC RRD42 (C) DEC 1.4a
I made sure to put the root partition in the first 1GB of the disk (it's 128MB) so there shouldn't be any problems there.
As a quick workaround you should be able to boot the cdrom kernel with
-a and then give sd0a as the root filesystem.
This still isn't working. I get the prompt for what filesystem to boot from, but various combinations of sd(0,0,n)netbsd don't work. When I boot the installer and drop to a shell, I can mount /dev/sd0a and see that there is a valid kernel named netbsd. I'm at a loss as to what is going on here
Was that including "boot sd(0,6,3)netbsd -a" - which hopefully would get the prom to boot the kernel from CD and pass the askroot flag to it?
Yes, I was in the NetBSD bootloader. If I boot to the installer and drop to a shell I can mount the filesystem and see that a full standard install, including /netbsd, exists on sd0a.
ok boot sd(0,6,3)netbsd -a
Probing Memory Bank #: 1 2 3 4 5
Booting from: sd(0,6,3)netbsd -a
>> NetBSD/sparc Secondary Boot, Revision 1.15 (Wed Jan 9 11:09:16 UTC 2019)
device[sd(0,6,3)netbsd] ("halt" to halt): sd(0,0,0)netbsd
boot (press RETURN to try default list):
Booting netbsd
The selected SCSI device is not responding
Can't open device `sd(0,0,0)netbsd'
Cannot load netbsd: error=6
device[sd(0,0,0)netbsd] ("halt" to halt): sd(0,0,3)netbsd
boot (press RETURN to try default list):
Booting netbsd
The selected SCSI device is not responding
Can't open device `sd(0,0,3)netbsd'
Cannot load netbsd: error=6
I may give up on this system; the onboard ethernet appears to be dead and I don't have an SBUS ethernet card that this machine will recognize. I am still willing to do testing for bug fixing though.
It does have a dead NVRAM, but I am familiar with that FAQ and reset everything to reasonable values. The problem with the ethernet is that it blows the onboard fuse.
-Henry