On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 01:04:43AM +0300, Tosio Onodera wrote:
> I've recently managed to obtain an old notebook, Samsung Sens Pro 500

Congratulations!

> and decided to install NetBSD onto it. But there's a problem:
> - it doesn't have a network adapter (I'm using a 3COM Megahertz 574B
>   PCMCIA card).
> - it has only 639+7168K or RAM.
> So when I try and boot from bootlap1+bootlap2, it just reboots after
> showing 0x75a7c8.
> I can boot from boot-tiny just fine, but then I don't have any PCMCIA
> support and so have no network drive to install from.

I had the same problem with my 4MB-memory Toshiba Dynabook.  (You would
have to pay AT LEAST $300 to coax me into selling this machine!)

> I don't have NetBSD installed anywhere else, so I can't make my own
> boot floppy.
> 
> Is there any way to install NetBSD onto my laptop?

Yes, if you have another machine of any kind connected to the Internet,
or some friend who is willing to download the binaries for you.  First,
though, I would recommend that you use an OLD NetBSD release such as
1.4.3 or 1.5.x, and give up on any server applications that require some
level of security.

Grab the "split sets" from NetBSD.org or mirror.  I would recommend
getting only base, comp, etc, kern, misc, and text to begin with.  With
planning, you should be able to get these on 25 floppies or less.

You can install on an hdd as small as 120MB.  I normally partition these
small disks about: 25MB for /, 25MB for <swap>, and 70MB for /usr.

With only 4MB of memory, it is not possible to even unpack the compressed
binaries, but it might be possible with 7MB.  If you run tar to unpack the
sets and the machine freezes, then you will have to mount the swap partition
before you begin your install: do "swapctl -a /dev/wd0b".

If this method works for you, I'd like a report back with problems you
may have had so I can write-up a more thorough "howto".  Thanks.

-- 
henry nelson
  WWW_HOME=http://yuba(dot)ne(dot)jp/(tilde)home/