Ahoy all!

  Greetings from the O'Reilly Open Source Conference in San Diego.

  I am trying to install NetBSD 1.5.1 onto an NEC MobilePro 800.
With that MobiolePro I have a 256MB Compact Flash.

Also I have with me:
  * IBM Thinkpad "butterfly" with FreeBSD 4.3 Stable
     blazing away with a 486-DX 25/75 Mhz and 24 MB RAM
  * Lucent 802.11b wireless network card
  * SkyLink 802.11b wireless netork card
  * PC-Card carrier for Compact Flash Memory
  * Xircom 56k modem (honest modem, not WinModem)
  * 3Com Ethernet PC-Card

  The conference provides for 802.11b Internet access, so I have downloaded
several NetBSD files, including PBSDBOOT.EXE and kern.tgz.  Also 
base.tgz, etc.tgz, and so on.  (via FTP)

0) I read the documentation on the NetBSD hpcmips webpage.

1)  I mounted the 256MB compact flash onto my FreeBSD Thinkpad (MS-DOS
mount) and copied PBSDBOOT.EXE and 'netbsd' (from kern.tgz) to this
compact flash.

2) I inserted the 256MB compact flash into the MobilePro 800 and executed
PBSDBOOT.EXE  All goes well for a few moments as a status window shows
that something is being extracted, then the MoblePro locks up.

3) Think, then read the NetBSD hpcmips docs more carefully and understand
that the compact flash must have a 'DOS Partition' (just big enough for
PBSDBOOT.EXE to exist, I think) and a NetBSD FFS Partition (make it big)
to hold the 'netbsd' kernel and the rest of the system.

4) Try to use the FreeBSD utilities 'fdisk' and 'disklabel' to create
the appropriate disk setup.  I became confused and uncertain, so I
resorted to running '/stand/sysinstall' and started the process to
install FreeBSD on the compact flash.  In this way I was able to
run the disklabel program (I think) and use 'T' command to setup the
partition type for 'DOS' and 'NetBSD'.

HERE IS WHERE I NEED SOME GUIDANCE:
5) Some success, however I cannot format the DOS partition from FreeBSD
and it seems that I cannot 'newfs' the NetBSD FFS from FreeBSD.

  I think that if I could format the DOS partition (perhaps with help
from somebody with a Windows notebook), then insert, mount, and
copy PBSDBOOT.EXE to it, and also format the NetBSD FFS partition, mount
and copy 'netbsd' to it, then I would be in good shape.

  If I could do that I could unzip the base.tgz etc.tgz and so on
and perhaps edit rc.conf on the compact flash and create a compact flash
which is 'ready to go' on the MobilePro 800.

--> My plea for help <--
  Is it possible to do what I am trying to do?
Else my only option is to find somebody with NetBSD on a laptop and see if
they might be willing to help me do this.

--> Urgency <--
  Not urgent at all:  I am doing this for fun, and to learn more about
NetBSD, so if I must wait until I return to my office and load NetBSD
on a notebook and ... etc then that is OK.

  Cheers from Sunny San Diego!

Marty Cawthon
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