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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!pipex!bnr.co.uk!bnrgate!nott!hobbit.gandalf.ca!dejones From: dejones@gandalf.ca (David E. Jones) Subject: Booting NetBSD on a 486 Message-ID: <1993Jul15.125247.18622@gandalf.ca> Summary: Why can't I boot NetBSD on my 486? Keywords: NetBSD,boot Organization: Gandalf Data Ltd. Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1993 12:52:47 GMT Lines: 26 Has anyone had trouble installing NetBSD on a 486? I have three floppies: boot (kernel copy), install 1 and install 2. I have used these to install NetBSD on a 386 machine. I have also booted NetBSD from them on another 386SX. However, these floppies do not boot correctly on a 486. At first, the machine would die at boot without printing any messages. I wrote to cgd@sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu and he indicated that the problem was due to old boot code. I built the new boot blocks he suggested and wrote them to the floppies. The kernel now boots on a 486 in that the initialization messages (wdc0, fdc0, npx0, etc) appear. But when I insert the install 1 floppy, all I get is: Warning: no swap space present (yet) I then get a few seek noises from the floppy, so its doing something, but no messages come out. The keyboard is alive at this point (I can toggle the numlock key and type characters) but I do not get the boot prompt. The same floppies will boot to completion on the 386s I've tried. Has anyone else had these problems? Please respond by mail as I don't read this group on a regular basis.