Hello Richard!

  RR> FWIW: The kernel that was installed on my 1.5 system,
    > from Tracy di Marco White's ISO images, is 4749749
    > bytes.  After you subtract buffers and other overhead,
    > you wouldn't have much space left to swim in.  (^&

Hmm... I wonder how much of that I could leave out.  I don't
know how big floating point emulation is, perhaps it's a
shame I don't have an 80387sx laying around.  I won't need
PCI, PnP, USB, APM or VGA support and I could probably go
without SCSI if need be.  I would welcome other suggestions
as to things I could loose in a kernel diet

  RR> If you are willing to trust someone else to build a
    > kernel for you, I'd offer up some of my spare CPU
    > cycles.  Send me a config file, and if it compiles,
    > I'll send the (1.5) kernel back.

Thanks, there's a good chance I'll take you up on that. I'll
try to install using a generic kernel, see if I can figure
out how to produce a suitable config file and send it to
you.  Probably won't be this week though.

  RR> I'm not sure what you mean by ``disabling'' the
    > parallel port.  Unless there's some benefit to doing
    > so, you might hold off on that.  You never know what
    > someone might add.  Besides: The pc532-specific man-
    > pages, section 4, contain a plip entry.  They claim
    > that ``The plip interface appeared in NetBSD 1.0.''
    > The PLIP sources seem to be buried in the pc532-
    > specific lpt driver; there's some inline assembly in
    > there...

I'm not familiar with pc532, it's something I'll have to
look up.  There is probably a jumper on the card to
electrically remove the parallel port from the machine.  I
guess omitting parallel port drivers from the kernel might
save a few bytes too (no idea how many though).

  RR> Alternatively to [temporarily] installing a floppy
    > drive, he could use a CD-ROM drive...

This mainboard is old enough that I would be very surprised
if it would boot from a CD-ROM drive.  I probably won't even
fit a CD-ROM drive because the machine only has one ATA
channel and I generally don't mix ATA and ATAPI devices on
the same bus.

Incidentally, I'm not a big fan of the PC, but giving it the
ability to boot from CD-ROM was a really sensible (albeit
recent) idea.

  RR> How many other ways can you get NetBSD onto an i386
    > w/o touching floppies, I wonder?

I'm guessing net-boot and 'disk transplant' as you've
described.  Can't think of any other easy ones from the top
of my head (although some hideously complicated ones come to
mind ;o)

  RR> I don't suppose that NetBSD lends itself to being
    > burned onto an [E]PROM?

I think that's a very valid and interesting question.  There
is a big movement at present towards unix in embedded
systems.  I know of at least one version of Linux that is
'ROMable' and where the bulk of it's filesystem can be read-
only.  I understand BSD is being used in some consumer
devices, perhaps running from a Flash disk.

Regards,
  - Andy.