[ Hi folks... Sorry I've been a stranger lately.  And, abs?  If you want
  to take this info and put it on the port-hp300 web pages in some fashion,
  I would be most grateful :-]

On Fri, 06 Feb 1998 12:25:32 -0800 (PST) 
 Nathan Gelbard <gelbard@ENGR.ORST.EDU> wrote:

 > Jorgen, 
 >         The HP380 is on of the best hp300 in the line(IMHO). Its got SCSI &&
 > HP-IB, which is a big plus if you cant find any HP-IB disks. Nice quick
 > 25mhz 040! The RAM is 'SIMM' like. We've found more at 'ancient-computer'
 > garage sales.

Yes, I quite like my HP 380 :-)

 >         One problem is they arent net-bootable (you need a BOOROM revision C
 > or later). So basically, you need a SCSI drive, hook it to a computer that
 > can write BSD disklables, and drop the miniroot into the swap partition.
 > Boot of the swap, and install away! (assuming your on a network where you
 > can ftp to one of the NetBSD mirror sites).]

That is incorrect!  HP 380s _are_ network bootable.  If your BOOTROM has a
numeric revision, rather than a letter, you may consider it "greater than or
equal to revision C" :-)

I have netbooted my 380 on serveral occasions when old disks flake out :-)

Unfortunately, the HP BOOTROM is completely braindead, and there's not
much of a monitor there.  It exists solely to load the boot program, and
that's it.  (Well, it also allows you to configure a few things that used
to be jumpers on old 300-series machines, but that doens't really count :-)

If you want to get a "menu", you need to press the spacebar while the
system is doing the self-test.  You'll see "Searching for systems" or
something similar.  It will then scan all potential boot devices on the
system looking for valid LIFs.  You may enter the configuration menu
by pressing:

	C <return>

at the "Enter system selection" prompt.  That will allow you to configure
a bunch of things like interrupt levels, etc.

You could read the NetBSD diskless(8) manual page which describes how to
network boot an HP 300...

Best of luck!

Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                            Home: +1 408 866 1912
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