Bob Nestor provided some interesting results:
>> Connectix (think QuickCams, think RAM Doubler, Speed Doubler etc.) is
>> coming out with a "Virtual PC emulator" that's supposed to emulate an
>> entire (BIOS and all) Pentium PC in software on a PowerMac running MacOS.
>>
>> I got my hands on a beta copy (1.0beta6) and decided to have fun by feeding
>> it the NetBSD/i386 1.2 install floppies. (this was on a PowerMac 8600/200)
> 
> [snippage]
> 
> I too tried the Beta 1.0b6 version of VirtualPC with NetBSD/i386 and 
> FreeBSD, but with different results.  FreeBSD 2.1.7 aborts with illegal 
> instruction errors during boot, but NetBSD/i386 1.2D booted and ran on 
> the Mac I used (a Performa-5300 120Mhz 603e).  I used the 1.2D snapshot 
> that Perry built and placed on the NetBSD FTP Server.

This sounded intriguing, so I decided to try some more tests myself.

I tried booting the 1.2.1 install floppies.  Once again, it went down in
flames at the point of switching to mount / on fd0a.  Most of the time,
the emulator simply resets without any indication or warning.

However, one time I saw some kernel messages before this happened; something
about a disk error while reading ("fd0a: hard error reading fsbn NN [...]"
or somesuch), and then a "panic: can't mount root" appeared, before the
emulator went off into never-never land again.

So, last night I downloaded the SSTO 1.2D snapshot floppy and tried again.

I had a *lot* of trouble getting my home Mac (an 8500/120) to read the floppy!
When it finally booted - incidentally, the 1.D kernel identifies the Virtual
CPU as "CPU: Pentium (ConnectixCPU  586-class) with MMX", to the person who
said he thought Connectix had said that it emulated MMX - it was able to boot
all the way and get into the install.  Woo hoo!

It finally dawned on me - the problem with the 1.2 and 1.2.1 install floppies
was probably because there were 2 floppies!

i.e., something about the emulator just plain didn't like me pressing the
"Eject floppy" button and inserting the 2nd INST-12.FS/INST121.FS floppies.
Since the 1.2D SSTO floppy (COOL bootstrap load interface btw, guys) is
just a single floppy, once it could actually read it, everything was fine
from then on.

> A few minor problems I noticed with the emulator:
> 
> 1) Floppy support was a little touchy.  Some NetBSD disks were difficult 
>    to read.

Indeed!  I had a LOT of problems with the thing refusing to read floppies.
Very frustrating to see "Non-system disk" come up after I'd just finished
booting from the same floppy on my Pentium 133 in my office ...

[Much later]  It's happening again.  I booted the 1.2D floppy, then tried
to figure out where the heck the "netbsd.gz" is on the floppy.  I tried
re-mounting it ("mount /dev/fd0a /mnt"), and it dies with the aforementioned
"fd0a: hard error reading fsbn 16 [...]" error.  Sigh ...

> 2) Ethernet emulation would cause probe problems during boot.  Had to 
>    disable the card.

I haven't gotten this far yet  :-)

This is troubling, because it's gonna be hard to get the rest of the
NetBSD 1.2D snapshot onto the disk if I don't have a network ...

> 3) CDROM was unsupported, but then NetBSD doesn't support ATAPI CDROMs yet.

Yes, the emulator supports the Mac CD-ROM drive as an IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM drive.
(Which is weird, since the CD-ROM is a Matshita SCSI CD-ROM drive!  But the
 emulator doesn't support the Mac SCSI, which is sort of a bummer.)  Also,
the VPC I tried had a folder with two files, VPCQIDECD.SYS and MSCD.EXE,
that supposedly support being able to use the CD-ROM if you run DOS in the
emulator instead of NetBSD.)

> 4) Shared Folders didn't work.

Not gotten this far ...

> The only problem I ran into with the 1.2D i386 snapshot, was the that the 
> installer disk can't write disklabels to a brand new disk.  Looks like a 
> missing parameter in the install script bundled on the installer 
> mini-root disk.  A little manual intervention and I was up and running.

I ran into the same problem.  Can you tell me what you did, Bob?

Also, generic NetBSD/i386 1.2D snapshot question: Where on the boot floppy
is the "netbsd.gz" kernel stored?  When the floppy boots, if you quit out
of the install, "mount" shows "root_device on /", but there's no "netbsd.gz"
there.  I assume it's in another partition (arggh, I *hate* "root_device",
can't we please use good ol' "/dev/fd0a" or whatnot?!?), but where?  I can't
get it to boot off of the normal virtual "disk" without a kernel ... (again,
Bob, how did you handle this part?)

Thanks, and sorry for all the questions ...

	- Greg