NetBSD Dreamcast Distribution
by David Brownlee of the NetBSD Community
If you have a Windows PC you can:
1. Download BootDreams from http://code.google.com/p/bootdreams/downloads
2. Download and uncompress a NetBSD/dreamcast .bin kernel (*)
3. Create a new directory and put the NetBSD/dreamcast .bin kernel into it - you may need to rename it to ensure it is no longer than 12 characters + .bin.
4. Put a blank CD-R in the drive.
5. Run "Bootdreams".
6. Select "CDRecord" (4th icon).
7. Click "Browse" and select the new directory above.
8. Click "Process" and answer "Yes" to any questions.
(*) NetBSD/dreamcast kernels are available in two forms, as netbsd-GENERIC.bin.gz which is just the kernel and netbsd-GENERIC_MD.bin.gz which includes a ramdisk with basic shell tools. Remember to gunzip the file to get the .bin. (a tool like 7zip should handle that).
A GENERIC_MD kernel will boot up directly to a shell. a GENERIC kernel will prompt for the root filesystem, which will be rtk0 if you have a BBA and NFS serving machine, and gdrom0a for root-on-cd.
The latest released kernel is in:
http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD ... ry/kernel/
The BETA2 test kernel for the upcoming NetBSD-6 release is in:
http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD ... ry/kernel/
There are also nightly builds of -current and the various netbsd- branches at:
http://nyftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/
As a bonus any files you put into the same directory as the kernel should be accessible to the booted NetBSD image, offering some interesting possibilities of "root on CD". Extracting base.tgz into *almost* works as is - it just fails when init tries to run /dev/MAKEDEV as the case-insensitivity of Windows has caused /dev/MAKEDEV to become /dev/makedev