Kernel panic on SPARCstation-20

[Greg Gilmour <greg@g-3.org>]

Hello,

I recently acquired a SS-20 at a local auction and have been having no
luck in getting Debian Woody to install.  It will boot fine from the
CD-ROM drive while in OBP (version 2.22) but will soon kernel panic
because it is looking for the root floppy when there is no physical
floppy drive in the machine.  I have been able to find a listing of the
exact same error on this list back in 2003, but never did see a
response.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2003/07/msg00114.html

I know the ISO I have works because I have been able to successfully
boot/install Woody 3.0rc1 on a Ultra1 and an Ultra2 with no problems 
(the U1 even had a floppy in it, but never used it to boot from).
I've also tried passing arguments to SILO upon boot ("linux
root=/dev/sdb" or "linux root=/dev/scd0", etc) with no difference.

On an unrelated note, there are two frame buffers on this SS-20:  one
built-in (not sure what it is) and a CG6 SBus card.  "stdout-path" lists
the CG6 but I am unable to find where the built-in frame buffer is so I
can set it (I'm only vaguely familiar with OBP).

Any ideas on where I can solve these problems would be appreciated.  But
I mainly want to get the system to boot so I can install Debian.  I'll
more than likely use it headless so changing the default frame buffer
really is not of great concern.

Thanks.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~                                                                     
-greg                                                                           
"hrmmm - a Beowulf cluster of Dreamcasts and PS2s..."
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