>So let me see if I understand you: I need to hook up a box (say my
>Win2k wrkstn) by null modem cable to the riscserver, and hypertrm into the
>risc box then..? Am I basically trying to backdoor around the prom? OR is
>it simply that the COMCONS ecoff needs to sense something attached to the
>serial port? Then fire the ecoff from the prompt on the riscbox. I hope 
>I'm not being too dense. 

Nop, you're right on track.  When you first connect to the risc box,
you won't see anything.  We're not exactly back dooring, it's just
that the console is going to swich from kb/monitor to com when you
boot netbsd.  When you boot netbsd it's going to use the serial port as it's output device and console.

>ok. So I shortened the name of the ecoff to 8.3, copied to c:\, did run
>program with arc path to file. Now I'm getting no errors from the bios but
>the screen just freezes up blank the same blue color of the prompt screen.

That's exactly what happens with my Olivetti.  If the image didn't
load correctly, it would have not cleared the screen, and given you
other trap information I think.  I'm COMCONS on the olivetti, so I
have a NetBSD/i386 box connected over a serial line and running
minicom.

>So then I try the same thing from a cd burn of the same files. Arc path it
>to the cd, the cd spins up but again no errors it just sits at the same
>blank blue screen. Am I screwing up the file in the process of
>downloading? I'm downloading the file from sourceforge.net using CuteFTP
>on a windows 2000 box, then using WinZip on the *.gz download, renaming
>the file in windows explorer, then burning a cd using Adaptec Easy CD
>Creator as the file is too big for a floppy. Any ideas?

That sounds all good.

>I don't know how to connect a terminal emulation program to a serial
>port...the only terminal emulation I'm familiar with is telnet,
>hyperterminal etc. Like
>telneting from a windows machine to a unix box. Could you point me to any
>good resources on the web? I guess I don't want to ask you how to do this
>unless it's easier to explain than it sounds.

Hyperterminal on windows would/should work.  You need to find a
null-modem cable.  You may want to do some experiment by running
Hyperterm on your RiscStation under NT, and Hyperterm on your W2k box
and see if you can see the letters typed on the other box.  Then you
know the cable and the connections are good.  You leave the w2k box
alone and boot the RiscStation with the COMCONS image, and you should
see the boot message displayed on the wk2 box.  Again settings should
be 8 bits 9600 1 stop no parity.

I went through some of that with my Olivetti a few months ago.  It's
pretty frustrating to not see anything.  For me, non of the available
images worked, so I had to create one myself.  This is where my
NetBSD/i386 box comes into play.  I used the i386 box to cross compile
a current kernel and would write it to a zip disk, and back and
forth.  I had to go back and forth many times before I even saw
anything on my terminal.  I eventually figured out where I was
trapping and modified some stuff in the kernel to get going.  I'm now
at a point where both ethernet and scsi is working.  I'm having some
instability problems( after a day or so ) but I hear that may be for
all ARC.

This was my first exposure to NetBSD.  In fact the first NetBSD/ARC
kernel I compiled was cross compiled from a Linux box.  That was hard,
but it did work.( took several days of effort just to get it to
compile )  If your machine is COMCONS with no scsi, then you're
looking at NFS root anyhow, so you might as well setup a NetBSD/i386 box.

Then you get into the kernel stuff by reading some code and asking
more questions.  Chances are, you wouldn't have to write a driver from
scratch, just have to make sure the devices are initialized and
detected correctly.  It's time consuming, but interesting and
educational to say the least.

Good luck, keep us posted,

....maki....