So for various reasons I had recently pulled an old macbook2,1 off the shelf and booted it up, and today I thought I'd try booting NetBSD on it just to see how well it works with NetBSD and vice versa.
I built all the various "image" files, including a live image and the uefi-install image, from my not-very-current current source tree. I first tried to get the live image to boot from a USB stick (using rEFInd). But it didn't boot. There was some message about Apple's compatability boot loader not working well with external disks (which was pretty much what I expected given what I've read about booting from USB devices on these old macbooks). Then I moved on to try the uefi-install image on a USB stick. This was detected (with the Option key held) as expected, and it booted when selected, and the boot loader menu appeared as expected. However no matter which option I selected, including a "boot netbsd -vs" from the boot prompt, would do anything more than load the kernel (I see the various section size numbers, with a nearly invisible spinner), then it clears the screen, then hang solid -- just the little un-blinking cursor in the "top middle" of the screen and the keyboard goes unresponsive and a full multi-second press on the power switch is necessary to shut it off. I then tried the following: ftp://nyftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/HEAD/201912110900Z/images/NetBSD-9.99.21-amd64-uefi-install.img.gz with the same results. Does anyone have any hints as to what I could try to debug this further? One nice thing I noticed about this MacBook2,1 is that the firmware works with a bluetooth keyboard, including in the NetBSD boot loader! (Which is lucky for me as this machine has one dead row of keys on the built-in keyboard.) -- Greg A. Woods <[email protected]> Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack <[email protected]> Planix, Inc. <[email protected]> Avoncote Farms <[email protected]>
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