Subject: netbooting hp380, overlocking, fun fun fun
To: None <port-hp300@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Nathan Gelbard <gelbard@ENGR.ORST.EDU>
List: port-hp300
Date: 05/20/1998 14:59:16
Finally figured out how to netboot my hp380. Its not the fact that 
getting rarpd/bootparamd/nfs to work is hard, its the fact that the HP 
cant handle a semi-busy network while loading the kernel.

Power on, rbootd loads the loader, rarpd, bootparams, and the kenrel
starts to spin. I UNPLUG the outside network from my hub, and plug
it back in after the kenrel has stopped spinning and starts detecting
devices. This works, its very dumb, but it works. Would could be done
to fix this problem?

I stole a 66.667Mhz (KTS KND-020c 9302 JP1) crystal from my ol'
IBM 486SLC-66 and replaced the 50mhz crystal next to the CPU on
my 380 board. The 'bios' comes up, SYS_UBOOT loads, but it
starts getting random le0 errors. It also said the date in the clock
battery was bad (happened right after I switched crystals).

I guess overclocking from 25mhz to 33mhz isnt going to work. Maybe
its a shoddy crystal? Are there different qualities of oscillators?
I cant imagine anything on that 486SLC board I had was decent :)

But now! Its running, netbooting, X11ing, all on a 19" monitor! Makes
my 17" CTX (brand new) look tiny. The only woe (its a 98564A) is that
its rather fuzzy on the default font on the xterms (8 point?). I popped
the case, and started fiddeling with the million adjustments, and it looks
BETTER, but every pixel is just a tad fuzzy. I really cant expect much
from something as old as it is (1990).

I was looking a a monitor database, and it claimed the 98654A had a dot
pitch of .5 - does that mean there's .5mm between each pixel? My
new CTX is .25 :)

Later,
          Nathan

Running NetBSD 1.3 on i386/SPARC/hp300.