March 9, 2013 at 23:56NetBSD / hpcmips
Recently, a very lively discussion was caused by a review of the NEC MobilePro 790 vintage keyboard PDA. But in general, the device is now useless due to the extinct operating system. You can try to get around this obstacle. Yes, we put NetBSD.
(c) Not mine
NetBSD / hpcmips 6.0.1 will be installed on the CF card. At hand was one for 4 GB, this is enough with the head. You can put the card either in its native slot or in the adapter on PCMCIA - there is no difference. The sequence is something like this: a backup of everything on ActiveSync, because the contents of RAM will be erased, installing the kernel, installer and bootloader in the on-board flash - it does not overwrite upon reboot, there are options for taking care of the installer’s access to packages. The installer offers a choice of downloading from the official repository, FTP, from somewhere else like NFS or from a disk partition. Initially, I intended to download directly through PCMCIA WiFi. The network was picked up without the slightest problem, but then there were multiple unpacking errors. I didn’t want to mess around, I wrote it off to a buggy Chinese router, so I uploaded all the packages from here to the card section:ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.0.1/hpcmips/binary/sets . This did not help, errors remained. I can’t say what it is connected with - the card is good and works with other devices without errors. Further installation had to be carried out on the GXEmul emulator. In general, a USB flash drive with this scheme needs to be divided into two sections - one package and, if necessary, the bootloader with everything you need, the second left empty and unbroken - NetBSD will break it into subsections during installation.
We need a bootloader pbsdboot.exe and core / installer netbsd.gz here: ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.0.1/hpcmips/installation . It also makes sense to put next to it and the core , in unpacked form. We throw in a flash or on the FAT-section of the card. The manual recommends a newer hpcboot bootloader, but it didn’t work for me.
In the bootloader, you must specify the full path to the installer, it will be of the form / Internal Flash ROM / bsd / netbsd.gz, and the framebuffer parameters in the drop-down list. When you click on Boot, the kernel will start loading. The process is not fast, it takes about 3 minutes. It will end with the appearance of the installer. After the obvious choice of language, there will be a less obvious trip to the console for the names of the disk partitions.
Here it is necessary to select "Utility", then "Run / bin / sh" and execute
The section with packages must be remembered, this will be the name of the wd0e type. We will need it later, when specifying the source of packages. Further actions as a whole are very obvious to the person who at least once installed at least Linux. Only partitioning a disk caused minor difficulties. NetBSD takes one partition and splits into /, swap, etc. It was unusual.
After rebooting the installer-> WinCE-> loader with the kernel from the package, we get the root console from the package, there is no password by default. The system boots up for several minutes. The longest step is update fontconfig.
The memory in the freshly loaded system is free somewhere around 8-9 MB out of cash 32 minus a little bit. And then, to be honest, there isn’t her - this work. X does not start. And they work in the emulator. I write off for some problems with wscons, the console driver and framebuffer. And maybe with equipment. But all attempts to pull the available strings to success did not lead. On the emulator, it looks something like this:
Oddly enough, there is a very good emulator of this machine - GXEmul. Not all iron is emulated, but a significant part of it. For the person who launched QEMU or Bochs, understanding is not the slightest difficulty. Here's the instruction: gxemul.sourceforge.net/gxemul-stable/doc/guestoses.html#netbsdhpcmipsinstall. There is a nuance that when using the -X option (a window with a framebuffer instead of a text console) the keyboard arrows do not work, which leads to a dead end in the installer when splitting the slice into sections - it is in this dialog, the only one for all the time, there are no letter shortcuts, and the choice of "OK" can only be done with arrows. However, if you put it on a virtual disk and use it in its entirety, then this moment will not arise at all. In terms of speed, it surprisingly corresponds to a real machine, I run it on a Pentium M 1.8. How to load Windows CE in it - I do not know. Perhaps a firmware dump. But there is no pleasure to do this, to be honest
To the museum, definitely. Has no practical use
(c) Not mine
Training
NetBSD / hpcmips 6.0.1 will be installed on the CF card. At hand was one for 4 GB, this is enough with the head. You can put the card either in its native slot or in the adapter on PCMCIA - there is no difference. The sequence is something like this: a backup of everything on ActiveSync, because the contents of RAM will be erased, installing the kernel, installer and bootloader in the on-board flash - it does not overwrite upon reboot, there are options for taking care of the installer’s access to packages. The installer offers a choice of downloading from the official repository, FTP, from somewhere else like NFS or from a disk partition. Initially, I intended to download directly through PCMCIA WiFi. The network was picked up without the slightest problem, but then there were multiple unpacking errors. I didn’t want to mess around, I wrote it off to a buggy Chinese router, so I uploaded all the packages from here to the card section:ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.0.1/hpcmips/binary/sets . This did not help, errors remained. I can’t say what it is connected with - the card is good and works with other devices without errors. Further installation had to be carried out on the GXEmul emulator. In general, a USB flash drive with this scheme needs to be divided into two sections - one package and, if necessary, the bootloader with everything you need, the second left empty and unbroken - NetBSD will break it into subsections during installation.
Installation
We need a bootloader pbsdboot.exe and core / installer netbsd.gz here: ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.0.1/hpcmips/installation . It also makes sense to put next to it and the core , in unpacked form. We throw in a flash or on the FAT-section of the card. The manual recommends a newer hpcboot bootloader, but it didn’t work for me.
In the bootloader, you must specify the full path to the installer, it will be of the form / Internal Flash ROM / bsd / netbsd.gz, and the framebuffer parameters in the drop-down list. When you click on Boot, the kernel will start loading. The process is not fast, it takes about 3 minutes. It will end with the appearance of the installer. After the obvious choice of language, there will be a less obvious trip to the console for the names of the disk partitions.
Here it is necessary to select "Utility", then "Run / bin / sh" and execute
disklabel wd0. The section with packages must be remembered, this will be the name of the wd0e type. We will need it later, when specifying the source of packages. Further actions as a whole are very obvious to the person who at least once installed at least Linux. Only partitioning a disk caused minor difficulties. NetBSD takes one partition and splits into /, swap, etc. It was unusual.
Work
After rebooting the installer-> WinCE-> loader with the kernel from the package, we get the root console from the package, there is no password by default. The system boots up for several minutes. The longest step is update fontconfig.
The memory in the freshly loaded system is free somewhere around 8-9 MB out of cash 32 minus a little bit. And then, to be honest, there isn’t her - this work. X does not start. And they work in the emulator. I write off for some problems with wscons, the console driver and framebuffer. And maybe with equipment. But all attempts to pull the available strings to success did not lead. On the emulator, it looks something like this:
Gxemul
Oddly enough, there is a very good emulator of this machine - GXEmul. Not all iron is emulated, but a significant part of it. For the person who launched QEMU or Bochs, understanding is not the slightest difficulty. Here's the instruction: gxemul.sourceforge.net/gxemul-stable/doc/guestoses.html#netbsdhpcmipsinstall. There is a nuance that when using the -X option (a window with a framebuffer instead of a text console) the keyboard arrows do not work, which leads to a dead end in the installer when splitting the slice into sections - it is in this dialog, the only one for all the time, there are no letter shortcuts, and the choice of "OK" can only be done with arrows. However, if you put it on a virtual disk and use it in its entirety, then this moment will not arise at all. In terms of speed, it surprisingly corresponds to a real machine, I run it on a Pentium M 1.8. How to load Windows CE in it - I do not know. Perhaps a firmware dump. But there is no pleasure to do this, to be honest
conclusions
To the museum, definitely. Has no practical use