Hey folks,

I'm making an attempt at installing on a PMac 8500/120 via ftp for lack
of other installation media.

My experience with sysinst thus far has been wildly colorful so I'm
looking for anyone else who's had similar experiences:

Sysinst seems to crash pretty regularly at the following points during
the install. Sometimes I get a little farther along, other times it's
pretty early in the install process.

--configuring network settings: sysinst asks me if the settings are
correct. I select yes and sysinst does nothing. I'm using the onboard
ether device (mc0) with no hostname, domain or DNS configured. Sometimes
this works, but it's pretty touch/go. If I interrupt sysinst at this
point (ctrl-c) and run ifconfig -a, it seems that my settings have taken
affect. I can ping my gateway and my own IP, but there are no routes to
anything else I try to reach. If I run sysinst again right away,
sometimes I can continue. Often it takes several tries before the ping
tests finally succeed, and sysinst passes me on to the next step
(configuring the FTP install settings).

--Unpacking the packages: Pax will start installing the packages. I
often end up turning away for a few minutes here. It seems it'll unpack
for a while and then stop. I have to send a break and start over. This
morning (just as I started this message) I watched it unpack all of the
packages,  and build the devices then tell me I can reboot and finish my
configuration. Sysinst was hung(?) again at this point. Of course, the
reboot was less than successful. I'm researching pointing OF at the
right boot device.

Is this normal? Or is my Mac broken. ;->

I have a couple plans yet, but I have no idea if they'll work or not. As
I write this, I've just started the FTP stage of the installation again.
Any thoughts? 

Cheers,
--Dave