This is good, because installing and using #TianoCore #UEFI firmware in place of u-boot seems to be the only way to get the #OpenBSD boot loader to recognize the #RaspberryPi's on-board display and a USB keyboard.

It is otherwise insistent on using the UART, which makes it impossible to press that "any" key to get the boot loader to stop so that one can type the magic incantation to get the kernel proper — in its turn — to use the display and keyboard. It too defaults to using the UART.

This is a Pi 4 in a PiHut "modular" case, still resembling that #Blakes7 prop. It's not designed for DB9 sockets, but it has HDMI and USB holes, plus optional plastic shields for covering them to just let power and Ethernet in when the Pi is in production.

Maintenance with just a keyboard and monitor is the goal. OpenBSD barely cleared this first hurdle of controlling its boot loader.

(It fell at a subsequent hurdle, which is why I'm now trying #NetBSD and #FreeBSD.)

#FreeBSD's FAT16 partition is 50MiB, and #NetBSD's FAT32 partition is 80MiB. These comfortably take additional files.

FAT32 is technically superior, with the variable-length root directory, but for DASD volumes whose whole purpose is to contain a couple of tens of boot loader files it's not much of a practical advantage here. And indeed on the downside, the FATs are an order of magnitude bigger.

#OpenBSD's FAT16 partition in contrast is a tiny 8MiB. #TianoCore UEFI firmware, approximately 4MiB, does not fit on it without deleting stuff.

Ironically, it is preceded by twice that amount, 16MiB, in free space not allocated to any partition. It's possible to delete the 8MiB Microsoft partition and re-create a 23MiB one, as long as one saves and restores the contents.

@rygorous

Of course, if you had worked in the non-PC IBM field, you would have grown up knowing all of these things by different names. Mainboards, not motherboards. IPL, not bootstrap. TRAP, not INT. ABEND. *Black* screen of death.

And DASD, not disc drive.