Re: SS4 - short disk read

[Julian Coleman <jdc%coris.org.uk@localhost>]

Hi,

> scouring my vintage hardware I found a magneto-optical disk, 128MB. Now,
> with that one, I could put miniroot.fs on and, boot and upgrade 9.0->9.2
> on the SS4!
> So indeed, it didn't like other disks or the swap partition of itself.
> Seens this boot limit, if it is that one, is actually small.

When I looked at this some years ago, I wrote [*]:

  On sun4 and early PROM version sun4c machines, the PROM can only boot
  from the first 1Gb of the disk.

  On later PROM version sun4c and early PROM version sun4m machines, the
  PROM can only boot from the first 2Gb of the disk.

  On later PROM version sun4m machines, the PROM can only boot from the
  first 4Gb of the disk.

However, it might be that this isn't correct and some of the sun4m machines
have smaller limitations.  For all my sparcs, I created a root partition
that was in the first part of the disk, so didn't run into PROM limitations.
Maybe that would be a solution for you as well?

Regards,

Julian

[*] https://man.netbsd.org/sparc/boot.8