Joel Kershner wrote:
> 
> Hello,  I'm a bit new to the BSD scene.  I have an old INDIGO MIPS
> R3000, and I am interested in booting NetBSD on it.  It has more than
> enough ram and harddrive space.
> 
> First off is it possible.

No. NetBSD-sgimips only works on Indy machines upwards IIRC (check the port page). Netbooting works fine in itself. You
just don't have a kernel to boot on an Indigo.

> 
> Second off, Will it require an existing Irix instalation (the version I
> have is old and very broken.)  I would prefer to run only one
> opperating system on this machine.

Hmm. Not sure on that one, but since there's no Indigo NetBSD kernel available it's a moot point.

> 
> I have the latest snap-shot, I just need to figure out how to boot.  I
> have tftp boot capability on one of the other machines on my network.

No deal. I got my Indigo R4000 to _download_ a kernel OK, but since that kernel was for another machine, it just died.
Netbooting works fine (as in getting the Indigo to download something via bootp/tftp), I assure you, so you can spare
yourself the trouble.

> 
> I have attempted to boot the kernel using an existing IRIX partitian
> with the
> firmware, no success there unfortunatly.  Any suggestions?

Depends whether you want to run *anything* on your machine, or specifically NetBSD. For the former, try Ebay and search
for 'SGI'. There's a guy there who regularly auctions off SGI software. You can almost certainly run Irix 5.3 on your
box and quite possibly Irix 6.2 as well, but check that! (on the comp.sys.sgi.* newsgroup).
If you want to run NetBSD, well, you're out of luck for the moment.
I'm trying to get info from SGI to try a port to the Indigo R4000, but I'm not having much luck at the moment. It seems
they only kept info for the Indy and deleted all the older stuff.

Cheers,

Gerald