On Oct 12, 2006, at 6:23 PM, Glyn Astill wrote:

> yone got any ideas? I installed from the first disk a few months
> ago onto a 40 gig drive and all was well, now I try to do the same on
> a 320 gig drive and the LCD gets jammed on that bloody poffd screen
> once I've set up the initial parameters.
>
> This sucks, someone please help.

Just checking, still all works fine but the display does not?  That's  
been the case for literally years...until just recently; within the  
last 6 months, April 2006, except for people who patched it on their  
own. The display really is not super useful.  If anything "bad"  
happens you still need a serial console to a laptop.

Be aware that until you reboot after install, you aren't testing it  
really.  If the LCD works during the install, then goes away on the  
first real boot, then it's just plain not working.  If it really  
works and shows the IP address on the first bootup after install, and  
all you have done is edit hostname info, etc, that's a little  
surprising.

Someone posted that the display and paneld were working for them  
right after the posting of the April 1 2006 build linked to here, and  
indeed that is something mentioned in the description:
-------------------
As a proof of concept here is a CD with a 10 days old 3.99.17 build:

  ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/cdi/cobalt/NetBSD3.99.17- 
restoreCD.iso

Features:

  - 3.99.17 boot (i386) kernel and userland
  - 3.99.17 remote (cobalt over NFS) installation kernel and userland
  - Slightly improved LCD installation messages
  - named.conf updated to use netbsd.org domain instead of  
mfg.cobaltmicro.com
  - paneld re-compiled for 3.99.17, seems to use 0.0% CPU now
------------------

That is the one you are using, right?
So- what edits specifically are you doing that break it?  I know you  
said you were following Shon's 1.6.1 install guide.  Perhaps do the  
install just one more time, and make the edits one at a time,  
rebooting between, so you know for sure what breaks it.  And, there's  
no reason for it to stay broken if that's what is killing it-- if you  
copy the files you are changing to a backup before you make the edit,  
just restore the copy of the text file.

My LCD panel has been blank since July 2005.  Not holding me back at  
all...

Also- if you do a ps -ax   does it really show poffd running?

HTH.

Brian