Re: Commodore A2386 BridgeBoard running NetBSD

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, John Klos wrote:

> The BridgeBoard can be used as a complete standalone computer. Assuming
> you have the ISA slots for ethernet and some sort of mass storage, you can
> set up everything else as though it's standard PC hardware. Before I
> discovered BSD, I ran Slackware on a BridgeBoard.
>
> There are two things, though: one, I doubt the PC side Janus would be of
> any use to any kind of Unix, unless someone knows x86 and were feeling
> ambitious. The other thing is that in order to get the machine to boot,
> you need to load the Janus library on the Amiga side.
>
> So, if you're running NetBSD on the Amiga, too, you'd have to boot an
> AmigaDOS partition (no bootblocks!), allow the Janus library to load, then
> run loadbsd. As soon as the Janus library loads, the PC system boots like
> a normal PC would.
>
        Does anyone have any docs on how Janus works?

> The lack of a display handler on the Amiga side (in NetBSD) is, of course,
> not a limiting factor, since one can easily administer a NetBSD machine
> via ethernet. I think that running NetBSD on an 8 meg system requires some
> patience, though.

        8mb should be fine with a custom kernel and without X.

        Hmm. If you can use the procedure above to boot NetBSD/i386 on
        the BridgeBoard, and NetBSD/amiga on the host system, are there
        enough docs to setup at a virtual serial port and network
        driver between the two - that would enable you to administer the
        i386 box fully from the amiga, and use it for routing etc :)

                David/absolute          -- www.netbsd.org: No hype required --