Subject: Installation Assistance
To: None <port-acorn32@netbsd.org>
From: James Holtom <jholtom@furtle.org>
List: port-acorn32
Date: 03/21/2002 19:41:17
Hi,

I note the 'problems' in gnats suggests that the docs aren't up-to-scratch
atm :) I concur -- if/when I've got this working I would be willing/pleased
to offer some assistance in this regard -- in the mean time could someone
assist me?

Many moons ago I had RiscBSD running on my RiscPC -- although most of my
computing since then has been on x86 FreeBSD. Anyway I've put my RiscPC
back together again, having remembered I've got RISC OS 4, and have
found a nice big 15GB IBM disc for it.

The bb_netbsd program for creating the NetBSD partition is behaving oddly:
(CVS tag: $NetBSD: bb_netbsd,v 1.1 2001/02/19 14:09:01 reinoud Exp $

I used !HForm (2.52 01 Dec 1999) and allowed it to use longfilenames.
HForm says the disc is 16383/16/63 C/H/S, but with LBA revises this to
29795/16/63. I formatted the RISC OS partition as 13315 cylinders.
Unfortunately bb_netbsd thinks I've got -3328 cylinders running from 0
to -3329... argh... I haven't let it proceed to mash my disc...

I am wondering if:
a) the disc is too big for it
b) the 'longfilenames' option I selected has used a whacky format, the
bootblock for-which is not understood by bb_netbsd, or worse is not at
0xC00 ...

Can someone tell me what to do / reassure me 'it will just work'...?

I note from the archives that there were issues with the bootloader, but
I haven't got that far yet, and didn't see anything about disc
partitioning :-(

Cheers,

James