I've been trying for a while to get NetBSD -current to run on a sun 3.
So far, no luck.  I thought I'd keep my mouth shut and wait for progress,
though, since no doubt I'm not the only one with troubles.

I get the idea, though, that I should be able to run programs such as
cc on a 3/50 or a 3/60 under -current.  Yet, I cannot.  I am running the
system diskless (and in fact, I'm mounting my file systems from a NetBSD/
sparc running -current).  I assume that my problems are ethernet driver
troubles causing corrupted NFS data.  I thought I'd verify that I should
expect things to work better than they are, and if so, I'll work on
putting NetBSD onto a SCSI disk.

On my 3/60, the most recent kernel (#137, Jan 25) consistently panics
while configuring le0:

le0 at obio0 addr 0x120000 level 3panic: pmap:pa_to_pvp: bas pa=0x1f800000

This kernel, running on a 3/50, keeps giving ether framing errors:

le0: framing error
le0: crc mismatch

It also hangs when doing any database work (like updating the password
files or building the kernel databases during multi-user startup).

Using an older kernel (#427, Oct 25), I can get the 3/60 to come up
multi-user.  I can compile some smaller .c files, but linking will
always cause a hang or cause init to crash.  (This causes the machine
to come up multi-user *again* without an intervening shutdown!  Core
files everywhere.)

This kernel, on a 3/50, has deeper problems involving 0xdeadbeef and a
subsequent Watchdog reset.  This may have been before the 3/50's memory
was properly mapped to allow use of the bw2 as the console.


Are these problems all caused by NFS troubles?  It certainly seems
possible.  If I should be getting a clean boot in any of these cases,
and especially if the system is actually working well for other people,
I'd like to know.  I'd been assuming for a while that the port just
wasn't that close to running, yet!

Also, running NetBSD seems to have wiped the default boot device
from my eeproms (on three machines!).  I don't remember the address
to open to change it, though.  No biggie for now.


I'm very excited about the possibility of running NetBSD on these
machines!  I have so many plans for what might otherwise be wasted
hardware...  :-)

Thanks for any help!
- Geoff