original iMac problems

["John D. Baker" <jdbaker%mylinuxisp.com@localhost>]

I've finally been able to turn some attention to the problems with trying
to run NetBSD on my original iMac (MPC750, 233MHz).

Recent changes in -current related to machfb have had no noticable
effect.  If machfb attaches, the display is illegible.  One can type
blind at the keyboard and it responds, however.  As part of the test
procedure, I booted an up-to-date netbsd-4 build and the same problem
has been there at least since then.

For kernels with "genfb" available, it Just Works(tm).  The QVSS8x15
font is nice (in -current).  How does it decide which font to use when
multiple fonts are compiled in?  Is there a way to make it use a particular
font in spite of what it's own selection criteria indicated?


The other problem is that at some point between netbsd-4 and netbsd-5,
probing atabus* for devices hangs the system hard.  I've completed the
first two iterations of bisection as follows:

21-Sep-2007 0000Z (4.99.31) works
21-Apr-2008 0000Z (4.99.60) hangs

Currently rolling sources back to 27-Jan-2008 0000Z and will try again.

--
|/"\ John D. Baker, KN5UKS               NetBSD     Darwin/MacOS X
|\ / jdbaker[snail]mylinuxisp[flyspeck]com    OpenBSD            FreeBSD
| X  No HTML/proprietary data in email.   BSD just sits there and works!
|/ \ GPGkeyID:  D703 4A7E 479F 63F8 D3F4  BD99 9572 8F23 E4AD 1645