Re: Upgrading a 90s laptop from 5.1 to 10 -- no FD or CDROM

[David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>]

As another test you could "boot -a" the netbsd10 kernel and then point
it to a netbsd-10 installed USB or PCMCIA drive as a root filesystem.
While you probably already have everything after the boot pretty much
covered, it's always nice to see it come up and run completely from a
netbsd-10 filesystem :)

You should also be able to pick up a CF to laptop PATA adaptor, which
would allow you to boot from a CF card. More usefully it should (*)
allow you to boot NetBSD-10 on the system, install onto the CF card in
the pcmcia slot, and then be able to move that to the IDE bay to boot,
giving you a way to test a full NetBSD-10 install without overwriting
the existing disk.

*: "should" - potential hand waving and profanities regarding made up
disk geometries and older BIOS behaviour.

David