Very Computer

From the litterature, it appears that a 68kMac NetBSD box must be run as
a dual OS machine.  I'd like to make the IIsi somewhat
usefull/entertaining again, but it only has a 370 MB HD and it's too old
to justify upgrading hardware.  Is it possible to do away with the
Macintosh operating aystem?

Also, I've installed several versions of Redhat on a Pentium II system
using an NFS server over a T1 shared by only 14 computers.  If it didn't
work out, I knew I'd just have to restart the install and sit back for
an hour while it installed.  I'm wondering how much more painful it will
be to install on a MacIIsi / 9 MB ram from 1.44 MB floppies.  The Linux
install on my i686 with all name-brand (3Com, AWE,  etc.) hardware
seemed much easier than watching my father upgrade to system 7 on his
Mac.  Perhapse I just have a much higher fustration threshold than Dad.
Should I bring a new bottle of asprin with me when I go to my parents'
house to do the MacBSD instillation?

Thanks for your time,
Karl

I can only quote the same lit, that no you must boot in
MacOS and then transfer to NetBSD.

Presumably you already know that you can automate this part
by putting the transfer program in the Startup Items
folder, so that you boot, get a cuppa, come back and NetBSD
is running.

You can install the MacOS and the program to transfer to
NetBSD in a very small MacOS partition. You could probably
get it into a 2-meg partition if you didn't want any MacOS
tools at all, certainly in a 5-meg partition. Quite likely
the MacOS installer won't actually install it in the
minimum partition, so you might need to install to a larger
partition and then copy to the minimum partition. Remember
that the MacOS will run with no disk space available at
all.

Even with a 370MB disk, when you can do it with such a small
partition, there's little point in putting any effort into
eliminating it entirely.

Quote:> I'm wondering how much more painful it will
> be to install on a MacIIsi / 9 MB ram from 1.44 MB floppies.

I can't answer that directly, but certainly if I were doing
it, I'd arrange to have a CD-ROM drive and install from CD.
Whether the drive is borrowed is not important, nor is the
speed. I think it's worth looking for an old drive. I
installed mine from a 1X drive, an original Apple CD-ROM
drive ($500 when it was new in 1990!).

Install only the minimum system using the installer that
runs under the MacOS, then get NetBSD up and do the rest of
the install. The MacOS installer program is much slower,
painfully so.

Edward Reid

I did install NetBSD/mac68k on a 40MB hard disk. The MacOS partition was
2MB large and contained just System, Finder and the NetBSD booter.

If you want to have an even smaller partition, you can
1) Install System and Finder 7.0 (you cannot use a lower version since
you need 32 bit addressing to boot NetBSD)
2) Get rid of the Finder: to do this, you need a ressource editor like
resedit, which is availlable from Apple. With ResEdit, open the 'boot'
ressource in the system file, replace the string "Finder" by the booter
name (might have to be less than 12 char...). save, move the system file
out of the system folder, move it in the system folder (this writes the
boot resource from the system file to the boot block), and move the
NetBSD booter in the same folder than the system file.

Of course, renaming the NetBSD booter "Finder" and moving it in the same
folder than the system file will work too.

If you want no MacOS partition at all, you can boot the MacOS from a
floppy...

I do not remember how much swap I had in my 40MB disk, but there was
enough room for base.tgz, etc.tgz and kern.tgz. Of course, I had to use
NFS to mount other usefull stuff like the man pages...

For the installation, I used an external zip drive. You really need to
install from something else if you do not want a big MacOS partition.

--
Emmanuel Dreyfus.  
Il ne suffit pas de crier l'iMac, l'iMac! en sautant comme un cabri...