Subject: laptop install
To: None <port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Todd <tlewis01@nycap.rr.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 01/12/2002 15:08:35
Hello,
	I hope I'm sending this to the right place, I just signed up last night and 
tried this earlier with the i386 port maintainer. Sorry if I wasn't supposed 
to do that. Anyhow, I recently acquired two old laptops. A Zenith Z-Lite 
425L, 486, 4MB RAM, 163MB hdd, and an IBM Think Pad 755Cs 486, 8MB RAM, 163MB 
hdd. I am trying to install NetBSD1.5.2 on each. Neither install is going as 
planned. My background includes Win/dos, IBM AS400, and some Red Hat but 
mostly as a driver, not a mechanic. These seemed like good machines to get to 
experiment with. I tried slackware and mulinux, but didn't get too far with 
them. NetBSD is the first I've tried that seems to have any interest in 
working for me.   
	On the Zenith, I used the Tiny Install. I have done alot of searching 
through the BSD archives and found some solutions that even I could do. I 
exited the installer to the shell prompt and ran disklabel -i wd0. This gave 
me a partition prompt and using the commands listed, I mimicked how the 
installer would have created the partitions.(been through the installer about 
50 times) I then wrote the partitions and assigned a label to the drive. The 
problem is when I fire up sysinst, it does not see the label or any of the 
partitioning. I've tried letting installer create the partitions and ^Z to a 
shell prompt to activate the swap. However at that stage of the game, there's 
no resources left and the install fails, out of swap. 
	On the IBM, I've tried both Bootlap and Tiny, the results are the same. I 
get through the local install cleanly, it seems, but when I try to complete 
the install through ftp, I get a uvm_fault kernel trap code=0 and a dc> 
prompt. Actually, Tiny fails so fast and reboots, I can't see what it didn't 
like. Not knowing any better at the time, I tried transferring the files to 
my own ftp server and running the install from there. I suppose I don't need 
to tell you that didn't help. I've searched on this topic as well but haven't 
found anything I can work with. Tiny and Bootlap don't seem to recognize the 
hardware in the same manner. For example, Tiny reads the pcmcia network 
adapter as ne2  assigning it IRQ9, Bootlap reads ne0, assigning IRQ11. 
Probably irrelevant since both seemed to connect.      
	I'm at a brick wall. That in itself wouldn't be so bad but my BSD toolbox 
contains little more than an upholstry hammer at the moment. Any help or 
advice, other than eating a bullet, would be greatly appreciated :) Thanks 
for your time, Todd