Greetings,

  I have a Tadpole SPARCbook 3GX which I have installed NetBSD 1.4.2 onto.
I've got it installed and working nicely, and I've been looking into
taking advantage of the new support in the -current kernels. I'm coming
from a Debian/Linux and OpenBSD background, so I may not be doing things
exactly the right way.

  For starters, I've downloaded Mr. Lorenz's precompiled kernel, found in
the archives at:

http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-sparc/2000/04/04/0003.html

(as the kernel I tried compiling myself from the March 14 -current tree
failed with some problems on line 123 of tctrl.h which I've seen in the
archives has been talked about). 

  So I've been happily using this precompiled kernel for a bit. I've read
reference to a utility called 'tadpolectl'. It is apparently not included
on 1.4.2, so I went into the -current tree and hunted it out. I've got
tadpolectl.c and tadpolectl.8. I've compiled it, without warning, and try
to run it, and it says that I am missing a device /dev/tctrl0.

  My question for today is-- how do I create /dev/tctrl0? I'm used to in
Linux the mknod command with Major and Minor device numbers, but this is
NetBSD, and I do not know step 1 about creating devices. Would a simple
MAKEDEV in the /dev directory take care of this for me? Or because I'm
still running a 1.4.2 system (with a 1.4T kernel) will I need to take
additional steps?

  My primary goal right now is to play with the serial ports, which I've
read I'll probably have to enable. Also, it's my understanding that the
external serial ports are /dev/ttya and /dev/ttyb? If the modem was
supported, would it take one of these devices or have one of its own?

  Thanks.

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