On Wed, 21 Feb 1996 06:51:22 -0500 
 tmac@home.glasscity.net (Thomas A. McLeary) wrote:

 > I'm working with Owens Community College in Toledo, OH to set up a class on
 > UNIX. We have been donated a couple of HP's by a local firm. One is an
 > HP/Apollo Series 400 and the other is a diskless HP 9000/340. The HP/Apollo
 > has HP/UX installed and is running HP cluster software to boot the 9000/340.
 > However I have to find an alternate UNIX because the firm that donated them
 > have the filesystems installed rather poorly (the HP/Apollo has everything
 > on one filesystem and when the 9000/340 boots it shares that exact same
 > filesystem which appears to cause some problems).

Cool ... NetBSD is great for an educational environment ...

 > This brings me to want to install NetBSD on them since the FAQ says it
 > supports booting diskless clients.  My questions are:
 > 
 > 1) The HP/Apollo is basically a post-Apollo-buyout, pre-9000-labeled
 >    machine. It is 68040 based and has all the supported 9000 HW inside.
 >    Is this machine supported? The FAQ shows a model 400 as a 68030.

Yes, it runs with 400, 425, and 433 systems, except the 425e (if I 
remember right ... it's a strange breed of cat).  400 is a 68030, 425 and 
433 are 68040.

 > 2) Does the NetBSD support for booting diskless clients work well?

Here's dmesg from my 319, which is currently completely diskless.  Apart 
from the "rbootd" stage of the boot process, it's a very Sun-like boot 
process...not really like HPs cluster[censored]d environment.  It uses 
rarp, bootparams, and NFS at the bootblock and kernel levels.  rboot is 
used to get the bootblock to the client.  See the NetBSD diskless(8) 
manual page.  It explains it pretty well.

I know folks who are using diskless hp300s as X terminals, print servers, 
etc.  Mine is mostly the machine I test new code on, but I use it as a 
workstation in my little machine room, too :-)

NetBSD 1.1A (GENERIC) #143: Tue Feb 20 23:13:56 PST 1996
    thorpej@basalt:/work/netbsd/src/sys/arch/hp300/compile/GENERIC
HP9000/318/319/330 (16.67MHz MC68020 CPU, MC68851 MMU, 16.67MHz MC68881 FPU)
real mem = 8380416
avail mem = 5144576
using 204 buffers containing 835584 bytes of memory
hil1: US ASCII keyboard
dma0: 98620C, 2 channels, 32 bit
grf0 at addr 0x560000: 1024 x 768 64 color lo-res catseye display (console)
ite0 at grf0: attached
hpib0 at scode7 ipl 3: Internal HP-IB
ppi0 at hpib0 slave 5
dca0 at scode9 ipl 5 flags 0x1: no fifo
hpib1 at scode14 ipl 4: 98625A or 98625B fast HP-IB
le0 at scode21 ipl 5: address 08:00:09:01:23:e6
le0: 8 receive buffers, 2 transmit buffers
root on le0
nfs_boot: using network interface 'le0'
nfs_boot: client_addr=0xccbc9814
nfs_boot: server_addr=0xccbc9801
nfs_boot: hostname=granite.SJ.Xenotropic.COM
root on basalt:/u3/granite/root
swap on basalt:/u3/granite/swap

 > 3) Is there anyone out there who would be willing to supply me with
 >    bootable installation tape(s) for use on an HP9144 16-track tape drive?
 >    I would gladly pay for time and cost of tape(s).

Hmm .. No one, to my knowledge, has ever tried installing from tape :-)

I have a 9144, but I don't have any tapes.  HEY PORT-HP300: Maybe we 
could all pitch in to get this guy bootstrapped?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
NAS: M/S 258-6                                          Work: 415.604.0935
Moffett Field, CA 94035                                Pager: 415.428.6939