Re: How do you use old versions?

[D Walton <walton.david%sky.com@localhost>]

I managed to download and install NetBSD 7.1 smoothly via FTP using my PCMCIA wifi card although don't know how to boot it or run a smesg so will leave that to Alex (thanks). For info my Z50 has 48 MB RAM.
Regards
David

> On 7 May 2021, at 20:48, Alexander Bochmann <ab%lists.gxis.de@localhost> wrote:
> 
> ...on Fri, May 07, 2021 at 06:32:53PM +0100, David Brownlee wrote:
> 
>> Testing ideas based on comments so far:
>> - 7.0, 7.1, 7.2 & 8.0 kernels (as mentioned before, this should all be
>> possible from a single 7.x install and just switching boot kernels)
> 
> I did most of that pretty much a year ago, but my notes from that 
> are not complete.
> 
> 7.0.2: everything seems ok, though the installer is very tight 
> on RAM, and depending on the phase of the moon setting up hard 
> disk partitions runs out of memory (I think I went back to an 
> 5.x installer in order to set up space for NetBSD on my new 
> CF card).
> 
> 7.2: doesn't even boot the install kernel
> 
> 8.0 and up: Install kernel boots, but userland throws "floating 
> point exception" left and right. Someone wrote back then that 
> other mips softfloat platforms seem to have a similar problem. 
> PCMCIA cards are detected, but none of them work (ne2k keeps 
> sending  "ne0:  where did the card go?", xi has no carrier 
> detection, everything wireless is a fail - didn't try PCMCIA 
> storage).
> 
> 9.x: Pretty much the same, except now CF storage is wonky too.
> 
> Anyways, I'll try to do some more organized testing tomorrow 
> and will feed in the results. Maybe it'll turn out that it's 
> better to abandon the hpcmips platform (or at least the z50 
> as supported system) instread of trying to fix all the mess 
> (I can do bug reporting and test builds and such, but I'm not 
> a programmer, much less when hardware is involved).
> 
> Alex.