On Fri, 24 Nov 2000, Ben Harris wrote:

> On Fri, 24 Nov 2000, Kjetil B. Thomassen wrote:
> 
> > I have an R140 and a couple of A310s lying around at home, and I intend to
> > get one or more of these up and running NetBSD/arm26.
> 
> Hooray!
> 
> > I have an Ether3 with Access+, an Acorn AKA-32 SCSI card, and also an
> > AKA-30 SCSI card that was included with the R140.
> 
> The Ether3 should work fine.  The SCSI cards are currently unsupported,
> but making the arm32 driver work shouldn't be hard.

I take it that you don't have any Acorn SCSI cards around, so I guess I
have to give it a shot myself. If only I knew how the kernel worked. :-(

> > All of my arm26 computers have 4 MB RAM, and some of them have an ARM3.
> > They all have a backplane and, I think, MEMC1a. They are also equipped
> > with RISC OS 3 v3.1x.
> 
> That should all work, but be aware that 4Mb isn't currently enough to run
> NetBSD/arm26 for any amount of time.  Help with correcting this would be
> welcome.

OK, I see.

> > My problem is that I have not been able to find an install kernel for
> > arm26, and there also is no archive of this mailing list on the NetBSD
> > mailing list archive for me to check into earlier emails.
> 
> <URL:http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-arm26/> works fine for me.  Your
> message is at <URL:http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-arm26/2000/11/24/
> 0000.html>, which implies that new messages are being archived correctly
> as well.

I'm sorry, I didn't realize that the list was sorted horisontally, which
is why I didn't find it. It is there.

> > I recently
> > joined this list, and so far I haven't come across any information
> > regarding install kernels.
> 
> The reason for this is simply that there aren't any yet.  I've been
> spending most of my time on making the system work rather than making it
> easy (or indeed possible) to install.

OK, then this is something I could work on.

> > If I could get at least one of the arm26 computers up and running NetBSD,
> > I could have it compile continously over the network,
> 
> In four megabytes?  Given my experience of running gcc on an eight-meg
> i386 box, I think you'll be lucky to get a kernel compiled in a week.

OK, I see.

> > hopefully being able
> > to assist you in your progress in getting an official port, maybe even a
> > 1.5 release.
> 
> There's no chance of actually releasing NetBSD 1.5 on arm26, since the
> NetBSD 1.5 sources have only rudimentary arm26 support.  1.6 is a
> possibility.

OK, then I suggest that we aim for that.

> > Also, I can donate one of my A310s to the NetBSD project so that you can
> > keep on testing on that platform as well.
> 
> If you can get it to Cambridge, that might be useful.  Since the A310
> isn't too different from the A3000 and A440, though, having one isn't a
> pre-requisite to supporting it.  If you want to work on NetBSD/arm26, I'd
> prefer you to keep the machine yourself -- I've already got five or six
> test systems.

I have at least three A310s in addition to the R140, so if someone else
wants to work on arm26, I could ship it to them instead.

> > The last think I need to know is whether a type 0 (15 kHz) monitor will
> > work, as that is what I intend to use for my R140.
> 
> Type 0 monitors work fine.  By default, NetBSD/arm26 uses an 8x8 font on
> the console, which gives you 80x32 characters in mode 15.

Good.

> > I am sorry that this email is so long, but I felt that now is a good time
> > to enter the port-arm26 project and there are lots of issues.
> 
> That's fine, as long as you're willing to work to fix them.

I could try.

> > Are there any possibilities for cross-compiling an install kernel on one
> > of my other NetBSD boxes?
> 
> Yes.  In pkgsrc there's a cross-armv2-netbsd package.  I do all my
> compilations using that on a macppc box, so it should work tolerably.

Good, then my 64 MB ss2 should be perfect for the job.

> You might like to look at <URL:http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-arm26/
> 2000/07/21/0002.html>, where I explain how my installation works.

OK, I will check that out and see how far I get.

> > Is netbooting an option, mounting root on my NetBSD/sparc box?
> 
> Yep.  That's currently the only place I've mounted root from.  Actually
> loading the kernel over the network is tricky -- I'd recommend loading it
> from a hard disc for now.

Could I run the bootloader from an Access+ share and also take the kernel
from there? You see, I don't have any other disk interface card than the
Acorn SCSI cards, and since they are not supported, I'm a bit stuck.

> Root on NFS can be arranged in much the same
> way as for any other NetBSD system -- I use DHCP to configure the clients,
> but RARP/bootparams should work as well.

My ISDN router acts as a DHCP server at the moment, so at least I get an
IP address from that.

I will do some experimentation and see how far I get.

Thanks for your help!

Kjetil B.
mailto:kjetil@thomassen.priv.no
http://www.thomassen.priv.no/