Hey folks...Like many others, I have been busy scouring hamfests and
colleges... Some friends and I now have several MicroVAX 2000's,
VAXstation 2000's, MicroVAX II's, and even a rather well-equipped
VAX-11/750, all waiting for NetBSD/vax.

  The question is...How will we support distributing bootable media?
I will have the ability to generate tk50 tapes, rx50 and rx33
floppies, and probably 9-track tapes-- but how to help those with NO
host operating system at all?  Tape and disk images, perhaps?  But how
to write them from PC's or whatever?

  Net-booting may be a solution...but only the newer VAXen support
tftp for booting.  They use MOP (Maintenance Operation Protocol) as I
recall, but there is no freely available MOP server software for Unix
that I am aware of.

  Anyone have any thoughts on this?  I will be able to get a few
systems up and running here, I think, and from there I *may* be able
to supply a limited amount of help to people needing tapes written and
such...but how to deal with this in a higher-volume situation?


                            -Dave McGuire
                             Operations
                             Digital Express Group, Incorporated
                             mcguire@digex.net