I recently aquired a DECStation 5000/120 machine from my university when
they "upgraded" to PCs (running WindowsNT!).

I use Linux on my home machine (i386 Slackware). I have managed to boot
Linux on the Decstaton but the hardware support is VERY limited (no
framebuffer and the serial console doesn't appear to work). A friend told
me about NetBSD (which he used at a previous job) and that there was a
DECStation project port.

I downloaded Netbsd Pmax1.4.1 last night but I don't seem to be able to
boot it on the box.

The box itself has two hard drives and a CDROM drive. Unfortunately both
the hard drives are dead (they never spun back up!) and I don't have a
caddy for the CDROM drive.. eek!

I have managed to get Linux to come up to the point where I can telnet
into the box and (in a very limited fashion) use the box.

I can't however get ANY of the NetBSD kernels to start. The resulkts vary
slightly. The kernel that went the furthest was the tiny.ecoff kernel

To give you an idea of what I am doing:

KN02-BA V5.8f

>> boot 3/tftp/Server/dec/kernels/nfsnetbsd

-tftp boot(3), bootp 10.1.3.1:/Server/dec/kernels/nfsnetbsd
-tftp load 988432+44960+143732

then the system hangs..

With tiny.ecoff it managed to clear the screen and display a solid block
white cursor in the top left hand corner of the display but there was no
text.

The machine itself doesn't have anything particularly unusual. The only
slot used has the framebuffer card in it (when it ran Ultrix it was
1024x768x256colors). Linux identified the card as:
    slot 0: DEC      PMAG-BA  V5.3a   

I'm not sure if I'm booting the machine correctly or if it is trying to
use the serial console?

I wonder if you can give me some pointers

Yours hopefully

Chris



Chris Pitchford <cpitchford@intrepid.co.uk>