Re: Installing NetBSD on a MicroVax 3900

[Mr Ian Primus <ian_primus%yahoo.com@localhost>]

--- On Fri, 6/6/08, Johnny Billquist <bqt%softjar.se@localhost> wrote:

> From: Johnny Billquist <bqt%softjar.se@localhost>
> Subject: Re: Installing NetBSD on a MicroVax 3900
> To: ian_primus%yahoo.com@localhost
> Cc: port-vax%netbsd.org@localhost
> Date: Friday, June 6, 2008, 4:15 PM
> All I can say is that the only reasonably working way is
> over ethernet. You need 
> some machine with a mop daemon running. A NetBSD system
> normally have mopd to do 
> that. Then you just need to read up on netbooting, and also
> find an image that 
> will boot.

Well, I spent my free time this afternoon setting up a spare machine to be a 
MOP server. (I didn't feel like installing MOP on one of my running machines, 
that's all) After some frustration finding a working disk for the Sun box I'm 
using as a MOP server, I got everything going. I now have a Sun Ultra 2 running 
Linux, with a fresh burned copy of NetBSD 4.0, and mopd installed.

I found out that MOP is rather picky when it comes to the networking devices 
it'll play with. I kept getting ?4B CTRLERR errors with the two computers 
connected with a Kensington hub. It also did not like the Cisco Catalyst 2900 - 
which makes sense, this is a switch, and MOP isn't TCP/IP. Then, I swapped in 
an old, reliable BayStack hub. This seems to work fine. I now get MOP requests 
on the screen when running mopd -d eth0. 

I have copied the "boot" file from the CDROM and put it in /tftpboot/mop, and 
named it 08002b17fbd5.SYS (the MAC address of the Vax's ethernet card). Booting 
the vax gets MOP requests to show up on the screen of the Sun, and on two 
occasions it seemed to actually download the file - lots of stuff scrolled up 
the Sun's screen, network activity blinking... but it wouldn't boot. Once I got 
the Vax to go to 1...0. and then it crashed with an error. Most of the time 
though, it just doesn't load, and goes to "Retrying network bootstrap". I have 
yet to get the Vax to actually execute the code, or give any hint of NetBSD or 
a bootloader.

Both computers are connected to a BayStack hub, and to nothing else.

So, I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

-Ian