hi,

> Hello all,
>
> I have a few questions regarding this mac and NetBSD.
>
> 1) Are Comm Slot 2 Ethernet cards supported if so what ones or all?
>
> 2) Are PCI SATA cards supported or just PCI IDE cards?

please take a look here:

http://netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/models.html#powermac

AFAICS it supports PCI (because it has OF), that means it will run a 
SATA controller (for more information on these, please take a look 
here: http://netbsd.org/Hardware/pci.html especially at the SATA 
section).

but you have to take into account, that even if the card is supported, 
you may not be able to boot from it -- because it's not supported by 
the OF (unless you get a supported model i think, e.g. from Acard [1] 
or Sonnet [2]). however, you could boot from the network, from CD, from 
a CF card (there are those nifty little CF <-> IDE adaptors ;) etc.

also, you mentioned drive size limitations... hm, i'm not really 
mega-informed on this, but IIRC i installed NetBSD on a PII system 
(i386) a few years ago which didn't want to work with HDs bigger than 
8GByte or so (don't remember correctly) -- as long as you boot from 
within the limitiation there's no problem to install (and use) a bigger 
HD... YMMV

>
> 3) With console boot can I use the port on the back that has a little
> printer diagram above it?
>
> If not where is the serial port?

it's the port you mentioned.

> Why I ask these questions is that I need an NFS server/cvs server.
> I obtained this machine for free, rather saved it from the bin.
>
> If Comm slot Ethernet cards are supported I can add in a PCI IDE/SATA 
> card

if this is needed, see above...

> make up an external drive box and use a large 120 or up gig hard drive.
> I only have an 8 or a 10gig to put in as the system drive to replace 
> the
> apple drive.
> I figure this machine has boot drive size limitations.
>
> Thanks for your time everyone,

cheers!

[1] -- http://www.acard.com

[2] -- http://www.sonnettech.com

-- 
Timo Schoeler | http://macfinity.net/~tis | timo.schoeler@macfinity.net
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