On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Bucketmouth Frogstump wrote:

> > I've recently acquired a DEC 3000-M400 with two turbochannel framebuffers
> on
> > board. I'd like to run NetBSD on this machine. Questions:
> 
> I don't know about the "two framebuffers" bit - no idea what'll happen
> there, but in theory it should all work.

The framebuffer has been working on the DEC3000/300 but I forget the
chipset it uses. 

> 
<SNIP>
 
> > 3. Can I run X? (On the alpha page it says the turbochannel FB's are
> > unsupported, but on the turbochannel page it says they are supported in a
> > platform-independent sense).
> 

If its the same the card as the 3000/300 X has been working but its only
8bpp :(

> X can be made to run. I'm a bit out of date on the state of the -current
> sources, but I have binaries based on 1.5 available, and the patches to the
> 1.5 release code are minimal if you want to do it yourself - just be
> prepared for a LONG compile.

Long..... Compile. 

> > 4. What's the easiest way to install netBSD on this machine? I don't have
> > access to fast internet where it's located, it doesn't have a CDROM (that

<SNIP>
> 
> I've put up a very minimal supplement to the install documentation at:
> http://www.maths.monash.edu.au/~barnesm/dec/index.html

Thanks for the work if no oone has offered any and even if they have. 

> All the binaries linked from that page are built from the 1.5 release
> source. I'm waiting for the 1.5.1 release to get everything updated. If you
> use the official binaries from netbsd.org, you will NEED a serial console.
> 
> >From the sounds of what you've got, I'd think the most painless way to do it
> would be to "dd" the cdhdtape image onto the 3000's hard drive from your
> Linux box, boot from it and then install the system via ftp.
> 
> Netbooting is also a possibility, but I've always found it very fiddly to
> get a 3000 to netboot from a Linux-based server. 

I've done it using bootp and tftp and NFS install, worst part is finding
the patches to get rbootp to compile clean, I still have it on a drive if
you find yourself needing them. I instaled NetBSD off a x86 RH 6.1

>It's a piece of cake with
> IRIX or any other BSD as the server, and I've never sat down to figure out
> what's going on. You may have better luck, it's just my experience. Once I
> got the first one installed, I've always used that machine as the netboot
> server for the others.
> 
> Good luck - it's not too much of an ordeal, really. Give me a yell if
> anything bizarre happens. :)
> 
Ditto, I'll help if I canm been down that road too. 

Terry aka Catfish