On Oct 18, 2004, at 1:05 PM, Jeremy Venaas wrote:

> Okay I finally got the computer to boot. it installed
> etc..etc..etc.. now when I reboot the screen stays
> black and nothing.

Depending on how much RAM you have, a self test can take several 
minutes. Did you try pushing the brightness keys? If you messed up 
real-base you'll have to do a power manager reset and then manage to 
get the SystemDisk/Startup Disk patches back on. Is there a startup 
chime? Is the hard disk spinning?

> I set the firmware as per the very cryptic
> instructions on the site. and nothing. is there a way

Being more specific would be helpful. I presume you mean setting 
real-base to F00000 and load-base to 600000.

> to see the the files and help openfirmware find them??
> Ive tried the "dir" method and I keep getting the same
> message "cannot open using the dir method"
> what am I doing wrong?

OpenFirmware doesn't recognize the NetBSD file system. So we tell it to 
boot "partition 0" which has a modified version of the ofwboot.xcf file 
that OpenFirmware does understand. ofwboot is able to read the NetBSD 
file system and tries to load the file netbsd by default and transfer 
control to it.

> could someone give me an example of opening a dir??

Old World (pre version 3) OpenFirmware can only read and therefore give 
a directory listing on pure ISO 9660 CD-ROMs and DOS FAT formatted 
floppy disks. It won't be able to list the NetBSD file system.

On my machine I just do setenv boot-device ide0/@0:0 ,type reset-all, 
then type boot when OpenFirmware comes back.