Re: Re (6): installing NetBSD on a Sparcstation 2.

[Dan Oglesby <danno%serverunderground.com@localhost>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: peasthope%shaw.ca@localhost
> To: port-sparc%NetBSD.org@localhost
> Cc: peasthope%shaw.ca@localhost
> Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 10:54:17 AM
> Subject: Re (6): installing NetBSD on a Sparcstation 2.
> Dan O. and everyone,
> 
> > So, the SS2 is being finicky with booting ...
> 
> The earliest documentation of problems installing on
> sun4* that I've found is PR 41194 by Jon Buller.
> 
> My difficulty with hdd recognition is just a blunder of
> my own, which can be explained later.
> 
> > The SS2 I have is currently running version 2.4 of the PROM
> > firmware. I am attempting to upgrade this to 2.9, since that seems
> > to be the version best supported by NetBSD and Linux.
> 
> Will be interesting to learn the outcome.
> 
> Regards, ... Peter E.
> 


I think I have all the hardware issues with my SS2 figured out.  Dead NVRAM 
caused some of the issues, but I have manually reprogrammed my hostid and 
ethernet mac address, set a valid date and time, and no longer see any CPU 
board related errors.  I have reliable CD-ROM drives to boot from, and should 
have Solaris 7 loaded by now so I can attempt to update the PROM to 2.9 and 
check out the rest of the hardware.

It's been so long since I last messed with my SPARC hardware!  One thing that 
had me confused was my inability to boot a fresh installation of Solaris 7.  
The install would complete, but the OS errored when trying to boot from the 
hard drive.  After much reading, I figured out my root partition was too big to 
boot with the older PROM version!  Ugh...  2GB limit for the / filesystem when 
using anything but the 2.9 PROM, from what I've gathered.

I have an IPC that was running NetBSD 4.something a while back, and I'm pretty 
sure it used the entire 18GB drive that was installed at the time.  It must 
have a much newer PROM, because I remember the NetBSD install from CD-ROM going 
without any problems at all.

Once I get off of work, I'll get back to the SS2 and see where I can get 
tonight.

--Dan