Hey,

since there is a thread going on about various problems holding NetBSD
from total world dominaiton, I'll throw in here some of my impressions,
in order of "experience".
I premit that I use netbsd since 1996 and linux shortly there after
since the glorious days of 68k. So while I am not a kernel hacker I have
some experience. I also run NetBSD on sparc (which was the absolutely
smoothest install ever, truly amazing. Boot from floppy or CD, network
install, done).

0) the world is biased towards linux and x86
solution: I don't know one

1) hardware support is limited. My 8200 mac is not supported, my pb1400
either. The only viable box I found is my 9500.
workaround: get another box...
solution: as far as the ppc601 concerns, someone had success on rs6k
machines. since the a PCI/601 combination is possible (on x200 machines
and as cpu doughterboard) someone with experience could try to see if we
as macppc could benefit too

2. installation troubles. It was really hard to boot that thing! I admit
that the fact that old 1.0 OF defaults to serial console is a
drawback...
workaround: none really found. I never understood what I did wrong, but
trying and trying again with different floppies and CD's made it boot at
one point. I always set the env. variables to the right value. But one
gets really frustrated. A small tool that sets them from the MacOS side
proved a bigh help for dual-boot.
solutions: maybe a self-booting CD or floppy would ease things a lot.
Once installed on HD booting becomes less a problem, it is the removable
media that causes grief.

3. Ethernet troubles. Onboard mc0 is essentially unusable
workaround: get another supported ethernet card (no, don't get a RTK
that one works bad under  NetBSD too)
solution: fix the driver of the onboard ethernet (which works on
1.6.2/mac68k. At least I think the Q840 has a mc0 card). But it seems
that not everybody can reproduce this either, so not easy.

4. SCSI troubles. I had problems with Sync/async negotation and sync not
working and locking up the kernel
solution: the patches from Michael seem to work fine and I never
experienced problems again. Others should test them and I think they
shall find the way to 2.0

5. X troubles. This is by far the biggest nightmare.
- server not working
- Michael gave me a patched server that seems to work fine with my
Matrox card
- How to configure X ?
- xf86config should be patched to provide mac savvy defaults for the
keyboard and mouse for example
- mouse button emulation
- as for all mac users which still have ADB mouse.. a workaround would
be to get USB card+mouse if you have a free PCI card slot. A better way
would be IMHO to do like MkLinux did and offer modifierkeys+click.
COmmand-clickj and ctrl-click are natural for a mac user.


this is the first bunch of "blocking" complaints.

A further "feature request" would be the following:
The OF console is limited. This is true also for the /sparc port. It is
slow, black/white only and offers no multiple terminals. It has of
course many advantages: works out of the box and works on serial port,
etc.
It yould be nice however to provide a "framebuffer" type of console.
Linux does the same thing on Mac and Sparc. And this way offer also
multiple logins.

This is of course not "everything" that should be fixed, the solutions
are only suggestions and it is my personal experience. But I think more
than a user would benefit from fixing these points. Also the Tsunami
board that my 9500 uses is very widespread among "older" macs and their
clones umax...)

SO, cheers,

Riccardo