On Sun, Feb 07, 1999 at 06:54:00PM +0100, Henning Schreiber wrote:

> 
> 
> >On Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:10:35 +0100  "Henning Schreiber" wrote:
> >
> >> [[ problems booting a 5000/200 of a Windows 95 machine ]]
> >>
> >> So there are ten minutes between start and end. How long does the machine
> >> normally takes to boot
> >> through bootp/tftp?
> >
> >Of the top of my head, 20 or 30 seconds...
> >
> >> Problems known about starting the bootp and tftp on Windxxs? I have no
> >> working Linux station at
> >> home.
> >>
> >> Windxxs 95 Version 4.00.950
> >> Lanworks BOOTP Server v1.1 Aug. 11/97 evaluation version
> >> Lanworks Bootware TFTP Server v1.00 August 1/97 evaluation version
> >
> >AFAIK, no one has tried to boot a DECstation off a Windows machine.  The
> >standard kernels will also want to mount their root filesystem via NFS
> >as well, which I suspect Windows won't do out of the box.
> 
> Normally thats right, but there are some tools, like BOOTP, TFTP and NFS
> server for Windows to make this possible. In my company the filesystems on
> the windows machines are shared to IRIX and Linux using NFS. So it should be
> possible for the DECStation to mount their filesystem via NFS

Hmm... samba seems a better solution to share windows shares to unix
hosts... but that's beyond the scope of this discussion.

> >Look at the faq: http://www.NetBSD.ORG/Ports/pmax/faq.html#nvreset
> 
> Great, it worked. Now I've two non working workstations!

You short the jumper, turn the machine on, this clears the nvram.
Turn the machine off, and _remove_ the jumper.  Now you should get an
unpassworded PROM prompt.

> Bye the way, the hexadecimal codes descibed in the last mail, on the console
> of the DECStation, are they normal?

What hex codes?  Both of my 5000s (a /200 and a /240) complain that I
have no mouse and keyboard hooked up, but they still boot fine.

> Does the kernel produce any output when loading, if it isn't finding it's
> root filesystem?

You will see numbers corresponding to bytes loaded, and then the NetBSD
banner.  At that point you know tftp is working.  If it can't find its
root filesystem, it'll complain.

> What happens, if you connect the 10 MBit DECStation to a 100 MBit PC and try
> to boot via bootp/tftp? When do errors appear? Could this be my error?

If you have everything hooked through a switch or hub, then the switch
or hub will do the job of turning 10MB into 100MB and vice versa so the
two boxes can talk to each other.

----
  Aaron J. Grier  | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@poofy.goof.com
    "NT is mute because it is fundamentally broken, period.  That any 
                 hardware works on that OS is amazing."
     -- Jacob Hawley, Sr. Manager, Custom Engineering, Creative Labs