David Burgess wrote:
> 
> Ken Wellsch wrote:
> >
> > Having been through a similar experience a week or so ago, I do
> > know where you are coming from.  I bought a mac clone (a UMAX S900)
> > which had virtually no peripherals (just floppy) and I have no OS
> > media.  I wasted a frustrating evening thrashing away with a Mac I
> > do own with MacOS on it and after a lot of headaches and hassles got
> > the two floppies made.  As it turned out, they were a total waste of
> > time.  The S900 will not allow the System Tools to update the OF.
> 
> I started on this on Monday....  You must be a lot smarter than me.

Little chance of that!  B^)  I just stumbled along and as for you,
Michael Wolfson provided some critical advice and Mac wisedom.

In my case I had an existing Mac with MacOS.  It made a world of
difference especially when making the System Tools disk.  I'm
embarrassed to say I have already forgotten how I was able to write
the *.smi (i.e. "self mounting image" is my guess) to a floppy. 

Oh yeah, that is right.  I just mounted it (or it mounted itself B^)
then I copied the "english" folder contents onto a formatted Mac floppy.
I booted using the Disk Tools floppy and played "swap the floppy" about
a zillion times to run the System Tools executable.

I've forgotten - maybe I could have just copied the folder right to
the Disk Tools floppy... probably didn't think of that... D'oh!

> > So being a serial console kind'a guy (e.g. my alphas) I just used the
> > keyboard sequence to get into OF, used my favorite serial tool kermit
> > to chat with the box, set the needed OF env values then just booted the
> > NetBSD/macppc install floppy which thanksgoodness *can* be dd'ed using
> > a real OS (NetBSD).
> 
> I'm in a jam there now.
> 
> I've got two 'bootable' disks.  One is the bootable ISO image for 1.5.1,
> and the other is the boot.fs disk.  I also set up a local bootptab to
> try netbooting.  More on that later.
> 
> If I "setenv boot-device fd", the disk spins and spits.

I had to type "boot fd0" or I got a nasty fatal gripe from OF.

I confused myself a couple times getting the error by typing "boot fd"
without the "number" part.  Maybe that is UMAX specific...

> If I try to set up the CD-ROM, the whole system just laughs.
> 
> If I use 'boot whatever', the system ignores me extremely effectively.
> The scariest part there is that the tftp seems to be trying to work,
> but the bootp is failing.  I see the bootp traffic in the TCPDUMP, but
> not the arp.  I think it's a MAC address thing.
> 
> Basically, I can't boot anything but the MacOS fixit disk.  I can,
> however, boot that at will. :-)  I can't eject it or do anything with
> it, but I can boot from it.

So I take it that "eject fd" doesn't work from the OF?

> > I don't have a working video (this box like the 9500 is clones does
> > not come with built-in video) card, so I just chat via serial when
> > needed and normally via ssh over the network.
> 
> I'm just a rube here, but wouldn't just about any PCI video card
> solve your primary problem?

Well, as I understand this, most/all cards on pretty much any vendor
architecture include some PROM type glue on the card.  So for example,
a Mac PCI card has open-firmware glue.  While a PC card may have x86
code or something.

An entertaining example of this are DEC turbochannel cards.  I think
they arrived on the scene along with DEC/MIPS boxes.  So the PROM glue
on those cards is MIPS code.  Well, early Alphas also do TC cards.  I
understood there is some sort of MIPS emulator in the SRM to gronk them
and allow them to properly initialize.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Sounded interesting.

> Working seems to be a relative term in MacBSD land.  The documentation
> I've D/Led for the machine indicates that it should be able to use the
> el-cheapo monitor that is sitting on top of the box right now.

Is this a PC monitor with a VGA to D15 converter dongle?  Or is it
a real Mac monitor?  A real Mac monitor is supposed to provide pin
settings that "tell" the Mac what resolution it can do.  While a less
than cheap VGA converter has some sort of switch(es) to select what
resolution you want to emulate I believe.

> I'm going to try and 'blind-mouse' my way around the screen and see
> if I can't accidentally get the video mode into a position I can use.
> 
> > I suppose the 7600 is so broken in its OF you'd not get this to work,
> > but it should be easy to try and cost no money B^)
> 
> Actually, it's tantalizingly close.  It acts like it might TRY to
> boot every once in a while, and I am seeing things that I expect
> to happen happen.  Maybe I'll get another set closer tonight.
> 
> Wish me luck.  I'll probably post my success flag when I finally
> get frustrated and quit again tonight.
> 
> Who knows, it could just be a bad floppy.

Hey, sure - good luck!

-- Ken