On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 11:36:52PM -0800, Charles The Hawk wrote:
> 
> --- Charles The Hawk <charlesthehawk@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > to be correct.  However, when i run the Booter, i
> > get the message "Bye-bye [blah, blah]" and the
> > machine freezes.  Heh, it certainly *shouldn't* be
> > done like that.
> 
> I've finally found reference to this in the archives
> from a year ago.  It looks like the only solution was
> to use the traditional installer instead of SysInst.
> The main reason i wanted to use SysInst was to install
> via NFS.  As best i can tell, to use the traditional
> method, i have to make the MacOS partition large
> enough to hold base.tgz, a minimal MacOS, and the
> installation programs.  That uses up at least 20MB of
> the very limited disk space.  Then i have the problem
> of how to get base.tgz onto machine in the first
> place.  If i do it via network, then i'll have to
> install more than the minimal MacOS.  I can split
> base.tgz on my Linux machine, but i don't know how
> to put it back together on the Mac.

Traditional install has the advantage that you can get everything onto
the  NetBSD partitions before  booting into  NetBSD, which  means that
your swap partition hasn't been  touched yet, which means that you can
have  that  swap partition  temporarily  formatted  as  HFS (or  VFAT,
perhaps) to hold base.tgz and some other stuff.  And that all leads to
useful practice fiddling with disk partitions (for which I like pdisk,
but that is  a matter of taste).  For a machine  with an internal hard
drive  more than  about 120  MB or  so, it  may be  useful to  keep an
exchange partition.  The partition type should be "Apple_HFS", but the
filesystem on it can be something like VFAT that the NetBSD kernel and
MacOS can both  recognize.  (Yes, that adds a little  more crud on the
MacOS side, but not much.)

Regarding joining files on MacOS, I don't remember exactly what
happened when I tried that -- found something like shareware that
didn't work very well, maybe.

What I suggest is installing some MacOS networking stuff.  The
experience gained, learning about internetworking with elderly MacOS,
might be a good c.v. item for somebody.

An alternative is trying to find some kind of sharable media.  For my
own struggles with installing NetBSD onto a PowerBook 160 (68030
processor, no FPU, 10 megs RAM), I have found my SCSI Zip-drive to be
ideal.  Even the tiniest external SCSI disk would make your life a lot
easier.  (More or less, any Mac Portable or PowerBook has a "SCSI-disk
mode".  Perhaps assign one of your kids to work out how to convert one
of your existing machines into an external SCSI disk?)

-- 
John