Bryan,

Thanks for the info and the offer to compile stuff.  I
think I have enough pieces to put togeather an old
socket 7 system.  I figure I can install NetBSD for
i386 on it.   From there it should be fairly easy to
compile stuff for the Mobile Pro.  With a little more
work I might be able to figure out how to compile
stuff from my linux system (Mandrake 9.2)

Interesting what you said about mipsel (MIPS little
endian) binaries.  I didn't realize that the
difference was so subtle.

Thanks again for the offer.  I am going to try to put
together my own solution, but if I get stuck I may
take you up on the offer.

Rafe


--- Bryan Vyhmeister <netbsd@bsdjournal.net> wrote:
> Rafe wrote:
> > Nec MobilePro 780
> > NetBSD 1.6.1
> > 
> > Still new to NetBSD and running UNIX OS from such
> a
> > small platform.  Since I am so new, sometimes my
> > questions are completly off track.  If someone
> could
> > point me in the right direction, I am glad to
> figure
> > the rest out as I go.
> 
> We will help you out however we can.
> 
> > Has anyone had any luck with the Magicstor 2.2+ GB
> > microdrives?  I have had some success with a
> SanDisk
> > 512MB CF card, but found I kept getting out of
> swap
> > space errors when trying to compile large
> programs. 
> 
> I can't help you with that issue in particular. I
> have been using a 1 GB 
> Microdrive as well as a 512 MB CF card.
> 
> > Is it true that I don't want to make a swap file
> when
> > using soild state cf storage cards?
> 
> Yes. Solid state storage is limited to something
> like 1000000 writes as 
> I remember. If you are doing writes to CF all the
> time because of swap, 
> in theory, you will rack up writes very quickly. I
> am not aware of 
> anyone actually running into this problem in
> practice though. On hpcmips 
> and hpcarm system I run without swap and with
> options enabled that 
> minimize disk writes.
> 
> > Some how I did get the kernel to compile one time
> with
> > just the 32mb of main ram and no swap file, but I
> have
> > not been able to do this since.  Do people ever
> make
> > tempory swap files - compile the large program or
> what
> > ever and then remove the swap file again?
> 
> Because NetBSD packages are binary compatible across
> multiple hardware 
> platforms, I just use a Cobalt RaQ 2+ to compile any
> programs I need. 
> Both NetBSD/hpcmips and NetBSD/cobalt generate
> mipsel (MIPS little 
> endian) packages. My RaQ 2+ has 256 MB of memory and
> a 40 GB disk so it 
> works just fine. I can compile packages for you if
> need be. I hope that 
> information helps.
> 
> Bryan