On  7 Sep, Patrick Finnegan wrote:

> I've downloaded the '7043boot.fs' file, and am able to successfully boot
> to a point where it asks me for a root device.
> 
> Now, can anyone tell me how to get an installer running?
You need to boot the machine with the "install" image. This should be
in the same directory where you found the "7043boot.fs". (BTW: where
did you find this file? I never noticed it bevore.) At least on
ftp://releng.netbsd.org/ should be the image you need. 

Note that sysinstall doesn't make the disk bootable. You will need to
do some black magic with fdisk to create a bootable disk. The PREP
machins have a MBR partition table (like i386) with a partition of type
65 that contains the bootimage. There is an other partition of type 169
(?) that contains the BSD part of the disk, i.e. there is a BSD
disklabel and all BSD slices in it. I was never successful in creating
a bootable MBR partition table. Finaly I dd-ed the boot.fs image to the
disk. This image has a valid, bootable MBR partition table. Then I
edited this MBR partition table by hand and added the BSD partition. The
rest was the usual "install by hand": disklabel, newfs, mount, tar, ...
The machine can boot from its own disk now, but I have to enter the
root device each time. And I don't know how to install an other kernel. 

Additional note: As usual I was not able to find a working floppy to
boot the machine from. So I simlpy tried to boot the floppy image via
network (bootp/tftp). Surprisingly this worked very well. (On a
43P-100, your machie is a different type.)
-- 



tschuess,
          Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz