I don't know if others will deal with this, but I'm going to
go at these concerns one-by-one, but first... I run NetBSD at home.

	There are several reasons.  The first was that you can't put a
CDROM on a Sun4/260 without some hardware modification.  I tried a net
install and failed.  Just after having that fail, I found out about
NetBSD.  I was at first distressed that my hardware wasn't
supported... but then someone bent over backward to help me (you know
who you are... JT).

	NetBSD struck me as something that was going forward.  4.1.4
is stuck in several old ruts.  Source code was cool.  I always though
I'd like to run linux... but as a very old BSDer (who shed a tear when
solaris was released), I would never run it now.  The simplicity of
NetBSD soothes me.  I'm looking forward to threads, but writing a
driver for my mti card has my attention currently.

	(1) my Exabyte 8500, since at-home backups are an absolute *necessity*

	OK... this point is easy.  I can't hookup an exabyte to my
Sun... I don't have one... but the two tape drives that I have
tried... my current is a viper 150 work fine.  Could be faster, but
with only 2 gig to backup... that's an overnight job.

	(2) solid support for my 2 internal 1.225 Gb Quantums

	I just added a 1.2 gig Maxtor 'panther' drive.  Goes like
stink compared to the stock ESDI drives in this box.

	(3) my CD-ROM drive to boot from in an emergency

	I can still boot from my SunOS tapes.  I would suspect that
you can still boot from your CD.  I also keep around an extra boot
partition.  If you like, you can keep your root as a SunOS filesystem
type ... and can repair it from the CDROM's boot sequence.

	(4) DP on-demand dialup PPP software

	Been talking about that on the lists.  Since you've said that
you've been changing to a 24 hour link, this may not be a problem.
PPP has been rock solid for me... but I start it from the command
line.

	(5) INN software (I get a partial newsfeed sent from work to home)

	I personally prefer uucp over IP (more control, better
batching, compression and throughput), but then I combine ppp connects
with regular uucp ones.  I would not expect INN to pose any problem.

	(6) netatalk 1.3.1, which provides AppleShare capability to our Mac

	Might get this one to work through SunOS compat, but I have no
real idea what you're talking about.  I'm eyeing our quadra as my next
NetBSD conversion.

	(7) I'm also running FlexFAX (now HylaFAX), but that's become more
	    irrelevant since the Mac has a FAX modem and I switched the PPP
	    link to be more-or-less 24x7

	HylaFAX is running on my Sun4/260 with a few caveats for which
I suspect that my modem is the root cause.  SupraFAX modems are
cheep... that's all I can say.

Dave.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|David Gilbert, PCI, Richmond Hill, Ontario.  | Two things can only be     |
|Mail:      dgilbert@jaywon.pci.on.ca         |  equal if and only if they |
|http://www.pci.on.ca/~dgilbert               |   are precisely opposite.  |
---------------------------------------------------------GLO----------------