Hey all,

I just got NetBSD MacPPC installed and running on my PowerMac 7500, and I 
wanted to share my experience before I forgot it all. If anyone else is 
still having problems installing on a machine of this era, read on as you 
may find some useful tidbits.

First some background. The computer is a PowerMac 7500:
OFW Ver 1.0.5
XLR8 200MHz 604e CPU card
1 MB L2 cache
32 MB RAM
4GB Seagate Barracuda - (For NetBSD)
500MB Quantum Fireball - (For MacOS)
Onboard video
Onboard enet

I read through all the docs as suggested. First off I got System Disk, and 
patched it with the ResCompare app. I ran it, saved the changes, and 
checked "Stop Boot At Console" or whatever. That was a good call, it really 
bugged me whenever I accidently booted MacOS and had to run System Disk again.
setenv load-base 600000
setenv real-base F00000
setenv output-device /chaos/control
setenv input-device kbd
reset-all
I downloaded the boot floppy image (well one of them, 
"bootfloppy-990220.fs", i wasn't really sure which one to try) on my Win98 
box and used rawrite to create the disk. I put it in the drive and tried to 
boot from it. I would always hang after
 >> NetBSD/macppc OpenFirmware Boot, Revision 1.3
 >> (tsubai@mint.iri.co.jp, Sun Nov 26 01:41:27 JST 2000) 1701508+177748 
[100+68176+55886]=0x1e9468
start=0x100000
Okay whatever, maybe I got a bad floppy image. I downloaded the CD-ROM ISO. 
I was pleased to see it was only ~60 megs, unlike most Linux distros which 
are more like 600 megs. Not having a CD-Burner on my Mac, I burned the 
image with Nero on my win98 box. When Nero imported the image, I set it to 
import as Mode 1, not raw data, 2048kb blocks. It burned okay, and I could 
read the CD in both my mac and my PC. I did notice, however, than some 
files were only visible on the mac and some were only visible on the pc. 
Huh? Notably, the "ofwboot.xcf" file in the root dir was only visible on 
the mac, and several of the less significant files (like checksums and 
readme's) were only visible on the PC. I couldn't view the CD in OFW with 
dir. Nero reported that the CD I'd burned was a hybrid. The docs say an OFW 
1.0.5 box can't boot of a hybrid. The docs also say the official ISO can 
boot any version of OFW. Huh?
K, now I'm getting tired of playing around. This thing isn't booting and 
the docs aren't helping and I can't belive I'm the only one with this 
problem. I decide to burn my own ISO. I use the powers of my Mac and my PC 
combined to get all the files off the official ISO. I create a new ISO, 
mostly the same file structure except that I put both "ofwboot.xcf" and 
"netbsd.ram.gz" in the root directory. I burned with nero with the 
following settings: ISO Level 2, Mode 1, ISO char set, Joliet extensions, 
no relaxed ISO restrictions. Actually I tried first with a ISO Level 1 but 
OFW couldn't read it. The second time I could finally read the contents of 
the CD in OFW. Hazzah!
Uh, why can't I boot? I can see the files, but I kept getting a 
"unrecognized Client Program formatstate not valid" error. C'mon I'm sick 
of this, there is no way that file is corrupt. Hmm, when I view the 
contents of the CD with OFW the file names all have a ;1 after them. Uh, 
did Nero put that there? I'm still not sure, but I don't think so. Yes I'm 
pretty sure OFW put the ;1 on the end of the file names, probably as a flag 
that it had to shorten them since it can't handle long file names because 
OFW sucks. So after numerous mucking arounds I get around to trying THIS 
HOLY BOOT COMMAND:
boot scsi-int/sd@1:0,OFWBOOT.XCF;1 NETBSDRAM.GZ;1
which was exactly how the OFW listed the files when I used dir
HOORAY! It's booting! loading .text Aw crap it said CLAIM Failed! Code: 
blahblahblah
Where did you go, Steve Wozniak? NetBSD users need your help today, hey hey 
hey.
Okay now what the hell? It would always say claim failed after .text or 
.bss or something. After re-reading the docs for about the 10th time and 
browsing around the mailing list (a search engine sure would have been nice 
here), I started to run out of ideas. I hooked up a serial console. Man 
that was great, OFW is NOT meant to be used any other way. Suddenly command 
line editing and history worked with the arrow keys! Hallelujah! Hmm didn't 
help the REAL problem tho. So great now what? I pulled out my after market 
ram and L2 cache. I pushed the little button on the mobo under the CPU card 
that I needed to use the inside of a BIC pen to reach. After banging my 
head against the wall a bit longer I finally recalled reading SOMEWHERE 
than SOME SYSTEM with SOME OLD BOOTLOADER or something needed the load-base 
to be set to 640000. What the hell nothing else had worked so far.
setenv load-base 640000
boot scsi-int/sd@1:0,OFWBOOT.XCF;1 NETBSDRAM.GZ;1
OMG OMG OMG!!! IT'S BOOTING!!! OMG!!! IT'S NOT CRASHING!! OMG OMG OMG!!!! 
HOORAY!! THANK THE LORD!!!!!!
Well I'll leave out the boring details of my installation. It worked. Right 
up until the timezone configurator, where it got hung up. Oh well 
everything seemed mostly installed. Reboot. Uh...
It wouldn't boot. I forget exactly what error I was getting, it's been a 
long night. But it wouldn't boot. After mucking around a bit I did
setenv load-base 600000
Then it booted on the next try. Phew.
Login. Do some stuff. Reboot.
CATCH DEFAULT!
Uh oh, WTF is this thing? Okay, so since I got it installed about one in 
twenty boot attempts actually works. The rest of the time I always get a 
CATCH DEFAULT error. It's really annoying, not being able to boot for not 
apparent reason. It seems like if I cmd-ctl-power a couple of times and 
reset-all a couple of times and wait a minute after I get the OFW prompt, 
it's more likely to boot, but it's still unreliable. If I'm doing something 
wrong, I'd like to know. Otherwise, I wouldn't call this "stable" or my box 
"supported".

So my current status is:
Boots sometimes, don't know why I always get CATCH DEFAULT errors.
I noticed that BASH isn't part of the standard distro, nor does there seem 
to be a binary package available. Do people actually use ksh or csh? Bash 
better compile okay...
No PICO. Well it's time I learned vi anyway.
No ethernet device. The docs said it would be called either mc0, bm0, or 
gm0. No such luck, none of those devices exist. This is a serious problem 
for me, I need to get network support or NetBSD isn't going to be very useful.
It's too bad about XFree86 not working on this box. Actually this whole OFW 
thing kinda stinks. How come Darwin, mkLinux, and PPCLinux don't have these 
problems?

Please excuse me if my tone seems somewhat critical, because it isn't. It 
has been a rather frustrating experience getting NetBSD installed and 
running, so my tone is really one of frustration. However it is installed 
and running (mostly) so that's something. At least I've got Unix on my Mac. 
I'm only sharing my experiences so that others may benefit. Hopefully some 
of my experiences can be incorporated into the next release docs. Most of 
my questions are rhetorical; I don't actually expect anybody to answer or 
even be able to. I'm sure I could get my own answers if I delved deep 
enough into the source. But hopefully some of the answers will find their 
way into the docs eventually. And I hope to help the NetBSD MacPPC 
development as much as I can.

Networking support though, I could use some help with that. Anyone got a 
clue as to where my ethernet device is?

Thanks to everyone for all you've done. It certainly is a lot.
-73, Jeff