In message <Pine.SOL.3.91.960807102323.16688V-100000@m5.physiol>,
     Neil Hoggarth wrote:

> [...]
> > 
> > I followed his advice and downloaded BtRiscBSD V2.80 (13th July 1996).
> > After verifying that the "Video DRAM" field was set to 0K I tried booting
> > kernel 4444 and got the "only 8 bpp support" message again. 
> 
> At which point does this message appear? It so happens that I tried to
> install 1.2-beta to my (currently VRAMless) machine for the first time
> last night.
> 
> I set "Video DRAM" in the bootloader to 1024K (it was 0K by default)
> on the grounds that I did want to use the machine's DRAM for video
> there being no VRAM in it at the moment. Is this the correct
> interpretation, or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

No, you have the right end of that stick. It's me who is at the other end
:-/

I should have looked more carefully. I might have noticed that it says
indeed "Video DRAM", not "Video RAM". Your interpretation (the amount of
DRAM that should be reserved for video) is correct, mine (the amount of
VRAM that the machine has) was simply wrong.

I was "auf dem falschen Dampfer" as we say in Germany :-)

> 
> I booted from a 800x600x256 video mode and it started single user
> without any problems.

After setting that field to 1024K I was able to boot from a 256 color
mode as well, even into multi user mode. Uff!

> 
> I've partitioned the RiscBSD portiton of the disk, made filesystems
> and got to the state where I can boot single user using the root
> filesystem on the hard disk. I'm going to take the required sets home
> this evening and try them out. I'm not clear if this is further than
> Stefan has got, or whether I'm going to hit problems later when I try
> and go multi-user?
> 

Well, you got further with regard to booting without VRAM. I'm not
installing RiscBSD at the moment. I have a running system since the
beginning of the year. The VRAM-less-ness of my machine is because of a
VRAM update to 2MB.

If you can boot into single user mode you're almost done. Try mounting the
other file systems manually. If this works, too, you only need to install
the file sets. Time consuming but a lot easier than the step before
(partitioning, etc).


> Neil Hoggarth                                 Departmental Computer Officer
> 

Regards,
   Stefan
   
-- 
Stefan Voss
(voss@yoda.in-berlin.de)