OK at this point I have gotten the machine to swallow both nfsnetbsd 
and smallnet.ecoff-

There are hundreds of lines of:
?IO: LANCE  ste 0xa6b3 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
?IO: LANCE  ste 0xa6b3 
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
?IO: LANCE  ste 0xa6b3 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 
| | | | | | | |
?IO: LANCE  ste 0xa6b3 
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
?IO: LANCE  ste 0xa6b3  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Followed by

?IO: LANCE  ste 0xa6b3
?IO: LANCE  ste 0xa6b3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
.
?IO: LANCE  ste 0xa6b3
?IO: LANCE  ste 0xa6b3
?IO: LANCE  ste 0xa6b3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
. .

Repeated many times. I am supposing that it's waiting for the NFS 
stuff that I have not had time to look at. I put it off when I saw 
that I did not understand Linux's new NFS implementation without some 
research.

Thanks for all the help thus far-

-mab



0At 3:08 PM +1000 10/26/99, Simon Burge wrote:
>Michael Bartosh wrote:
>
> > At 1:53 PM +1000 10/26/99, Simon Burge wrote:
> > >Michael Bartosh wrote:
> > >
> > > > Should work! Worked for septilum. But console says:
> > > >
> > > > -tftp load
> > > > ?IO 3/tftp a.out (-2)
> > >
> > >This looks sus - is the file "install" an a.out, ELF or ECOFF
> > >file?  Using "file install" should tell you.  Failing that, try
> > >"od -x install | head" and sent it to the list.
> > >
> > >Simon.
> >
> > ELF- this is right, is it not? Older kernels are ECOFF?
>
>There's your problem!  DECstations only understand ECOFF kernels for
>netbooting.  The disk bootblocks should understand all formats (a.out,
>ECOFF and ELF) but I think they have a problem with ECOFF at the moment.
>So on your disk, you have an ELF kernel as /netbsd, and for netbooting
>you have an ECOFF kernel in the tftpboot directory.
>
>Thus for netbooting your machine, you want the install.ecoff.gz kernel
>from the release area...
>
>Simon.