At 2:39 PM -0800 12/11/01, Henry B. Hotz wrote:

:)>Actually what would be more reasonable would be for the non-net loaders to
:)>use the load-base area as scratch, and then load the files where they need
:)>to go. :-)
:)
:)Is that the right distinction?  600000 doesn't work for loading from
:)an MS-DOS floppy either.  Perhaps 600000 only works for the special
:)case of the boot media that use our bootxx?

Actually, I just tested.

On my PowerMacintosh 7300 (OF 1.0.5), I didn't find *any* circumstances
under which load-base of 0x600000 was required.

Here's what I tried (reset-all between each command):
set-default load-base			(sets it to 0x4000)
boot fd:1,\OFWBOOT.XCF NETBSD~1.GZ	(MS-DOS format floppy)
boot fd:0				(NetBSD install floppy)
boot scsi-int/sd@0:0			("partition zero" bootloader HD)
boot scsi-int/sd@3:0			(NetBSD 1.5.1 ISO image)
boot enet enet:,\netbsd.gz		(netboot)

Each of these completed successfully.  That pretty much covers all the
bases (except HFS which isn't supported on pre-OF 3 systems).  Someone
must've done something to ofwboot.xcf and the "partition zero" ofwboot such
that it no longer requires you to set the load-base to 0x600000.

I also tested with and without the System Disk nvramrc patches, without any
difference in behavior.

So, can anyone on the list say with any confidence that setting the
load-base to 600000 is *necessary* to boot?  It's not necessarily
detrimental in all my tests, but it's definitely not required.  Granted, I
have no idea what OF 2.x systems do, but the default load-base on OF 1.0.5
and 3 have no problems with any of our boot methods.

Otherwise, I'm going to reword all the boot/install docs to say that you
should just "set-default load-base" (because System Disk sets it to 600000).

Mind you, this is also the first time I ever got my system to netboot.  I
think there are some issues with it needing to find the kernel on *both*
the tftp server and the NFS server.  I'll dig a little deeper and post
later this week on it.

  -- MW