Hacker News Reader

> some incredibly niche computer I found by accident

I used to think this, but leave it to me to disprove...

Had an Intel Atom board that would only boot Linux and... OpenBSD. NetBSD (and a number of other OSes) would hang when attempting to load the kernel and refuse to boot - likely due to some firmware bug.

View on HN

> Intel Atom (...) NetBSD (and a number of other OSes) would (...) refuse to boot

Was it one of those cheap tablets/netbooks that shipped with fully-64-bit-capable CPU (Atom Z3735F) but with dreaded 32-bit-only UEFI firmware?

GRUB can boot NetBSD there, although it's a bit of a hassle to set up.

Negative, it was an embedded board. GRUB was not the issue; rather the kernel would hang after partially booting. Affected Illumos as well so it's likely a firmware bug.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com