Re: anyone have a theory why net boot of a SPARC20 hangs?

[Julian Coleman <jdc%coris.org.uk@localhost>]

Hi,

> I am going to guess the qeX type ports are not really a popular thing and
> never really was.

Yes, I don't think that many people have them, and you are the first person
to try net boot using them.

> Unrelated but some of the sparc code is funny.
> 
> The reference to Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" here :
> 
> https://nxr.netbsd.org/xref/src/sys/arch/sparc/sparc/autoconf.c line 668
> 
> 
>     666 #if defined(SUN4)
>     667 	if (CPU_ISSUN4M) {
>     668 		printf("twas brillig..\n");
>     669 		return;
>     670 	}
>     671 #endif
> 
> Sort of makes me wonder who was doing that thinking.

I saw that too and it made me smile :-)

> I will try the hme0 port :

> Yeah ... that "Just Works"(tm).

Netboot using hme (and le) cards has definitely been tested, so I would be
surprised if that didn't work!

> Or give up on the qe nics entirely. Could be fun to try LACP bonded
> stuff but really a bootable SPARC20 is a museum piece anyways.

It should be possible to get them working, but it will need a bit of
investigation and testing (and someone with a card).

> A DEBUG type kernel would be a real joy. I am not entirely thrilled with
> the notion of a SPARC20 doing compile of anything but it can churn for a
> week and I would not care really.

You could have the sources on a fast machine and build there.  You can
build the whole of src and xsrc from a lot of other OS's.  I am using
currently an amd64 for my builds, but in the past I was using sparc64.
Whole/all here means all the architectures, e.g PPC built on sparc64,
sparc built on amd64, etc.

> Now then ... I did all this just to get a net boot config in place such
> that I may try the DEC Alpha over netboot. That is where things get
> really weird and obscure. I have a whole history of stuff on the "alpha"
> port maillist that goes backs months. Getting that machine to do much
> of anything has been just hell. The SCSI drivers are slightly borked.

Hopefully, I have sent enough hints on port-alpha to get you going.

> Thank you Sir for the excellent help!  :)

A pleasure!

Regards,

Julian

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