I've just installed netbsd 1.61 on a PowerMac G4 dual/533 (Openfirmware 
3). I had a few fits and starts, but overall the install went as 
expected. However, I have a very strange problem as it relates to 
booting from openfirmware directly to the hard drive.

If I set the openfirmware variables and try to boot, it hangs at a 
white/gray screen without any icons on it. The commands are:

setenv boot-device ultra1:9,\ofwboot.xcf
setenv boot-file ultra1:10,/netbsd
reset-all

But if I call boot directly with the same paths, everything boots up 
just fine:

boot ultra1:9,\ofwboot.xcf ultra1:10,/netbsd

I did some googling and found one reference to something called the 
white-screen-of-death that sounds similar to my problem. There isn't 
any detail attached to it and no explanation as to how to fix it. (See 
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2002/05/27/0006.html for the 
information.)

My machine has OF 3 with Boot ROM version 4.2.8f1. Any ideas on how to 
fix this or do I need to continue typing the full boot command?

cr