Subject: problem w/ NetBSD on a Powerbook Duo 230
To: None <port-mac68k@netbsd.org>
From: Christopher Pinon <pinon@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 10/24/1998 19:21:07
Hi,

I am new to both NetBSD and this list.

My goal is to successfully boot NetBSD 1.3.2 on a Zip disk (in a Zip drive)
that is connected to my Powerbook Duo 230 (68030, no FPU, 12 Mb Ram, 80 Mb
HD).  The good news is that it almost works; the bad news is that I don't
understand why it doesn't.

Yesterday I downloaded all of the necessary files and documentation.
Here's what I succeeded in doing---in fact, the first three steps of the
following all went very smoothly:

1. I partitioned a new Zip disk using the (patched) Apple HD SC Setup.  The
space I alotted to each partition was:

Swap: 6 Mb
Root: 14 Mb
Usr: 76 Mb
HFS "MacOS": 2 Mb

This is intended to be a small system!  After all, a Zip disk contains only
slightly over 98 Mb of useable space.

2. I used the Mkfs utility to change and format the relevant partitions as
instructed.  No problem.

3. I used the Installer to install the following three files:

kern.sbc.tgz, base.tgz, etc.tgz

I had worried that I would encounter problems during the installation
process, but it went remarkably well.  No errors.

(I should say that I'm a bit uncertain about whether I should install
kern.sbc.tgz or kern.tgz.  I opted for the first, since I figured it
wouldn't hurt, but my system won't really have to use an external
drive---rather, it itself will on the external drive.)

4. The final step was to try to boot the system.  I made minimal changes to
the configuration of the Booter (e.g., I changed the SCSI ID to 5).  I had
already turned off Mac OS virtual memory and extensions (except for the
Iomega driver extension), etc.  Then I tried to boot.  The funny thing is
that everything seemed to go well, i.e., I saw none of the error messages
mentioned in the FAQ, and the "Bye-bye ..." message even briefly appeared.
However, the booting ended with the following lines at the top of a white
screen:

[ preserving 323395 bytes of netbsd symbol table ]
Bootstrapping NetBSD/mac68k.
Getting mapping from MMU.

The cursor froze just below the third line---I couldn't type anything.
Waiting a long while didn't help.  All that I could do was to bring
everything down by restarting the Duo.

I tried booting several more times, changing the exact configuration of the
Booter a little each time, but I always ended up with the lines just given
on a frozen screen.

Does anyone have an idea of what is going wrong?  I would be very grateful
for any advice or help.

Regards,
Ch. Pinon