Re: Trying to boot NetBSD on '97 Pentium I @ 200 MHz

On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 09:19:40 -0400, [email protected] wrote:

> NetBSD/x86 cd9660 Primary Bootstrap
> 
> ... and everything stops there. Not a single character more. The cursor is
> still blinking.
> 
> Later, I burned NetBSD-10.1-i386-install.img to USB and used the Plop
> utility to force the boot from USB. That part worked. Now I got the
> following displayed:
> 
> NetBSD MBR boot
> 
> NetBSD/x86 ffsv1 Primary Bootstrap
> 
> ... and then everything stops, just like with the CD. The same happened with
> NetBSD versions 9.4 and 8.3.

You probably want to try disabling ACPI (-2 flag to boot):

  https://man.netbsd.org/i386/boot.8

Random older answer to a similar question (to avoid retyping the same
advise):

  https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2020/04/15/msg003919.html

You probably might want to compile a custom kernel to wire down some
isa and/or pnpbios attachments and the like...

I have an old Dell Latitude CP from about the same era:
https://www.macdat.net/laptops/dell/latitude/cp.php

NetBSD 11.99.5 (GLIP) #0: Sun Jan 25 14:19:38 MSK 2026
        uwe@majava:/home/uwe/work/netbsd/cvs/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GLIP
total memory = 127 MB
avail memory = 116 MB
...
cpu0: Intel 586-class, 233MHz, id 0x581
...


-uwe