Subject: Re: Floppy support
To: Ben Harris <bjh21@netbsd.org>
From: Ian Fry <Ian.Fry@sophos.com>
List: port-arm26
Date: 06/29/2001 16:10:50
On Fri, Jun 29, 2001 at 03:00:57PM +0100, Ben Harris wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Jun 2001, Ian Fry wrote:
> > Am I correct in thinking that floppy support is still not done (as per the
> > unsupported hardware list)?
> You are.  That list is basically up to date.

Thought so - I had a quick look at the latest GENERIC, and there's no mention
of fdc or fd0...

> > My A4000 kernel reports 'fdc0 at upc0... not
> > configured', but when I try to add the 'fdc' and 'fd0' lines to my kernel
> > config, I get errors back from config.
> This is to be expected.  Floppy support on IOEB machines shouldn't be too
> painful to add, 

Well, if there is already support for the chip in-tree (which it seems there
is), then I can understand that.

> but I haven't got much incentive to do so, since my Ethernet works, and my
> main machines are pre-IOEB anyway.

:-)

> > The reason I ask, is that I'm thinking about creating a root floppy, and
> > boot from that, instead of trying to netboot. Alternately, could I use a
> > floppy image stored on a filecore disk?
> Not easily, no.  

I had a feeling you'd say that!

> Your best bet is probably a spare IDE hard disc, and to sort out a means of
> getting a miniroot-type-thing onto one from RISC OS.  

I've got an 80M drive in the machine, and (somewhere) a spare 540M one which
I might be able to use (assuming that I can find it). I can probably manage
to partition the drive up under NetBSD/arm32, and setup the NetBSD
filesystems too.

> I'm quite happy to generate you a miniroot image (once I've persuaded the
> current userland sources to compile under NetBSD 1.5) if that would help.

Ah, that'd be good, thanks. I've been looking at the stuff that generates
miniroots for other platforms today, and I was going to have a go at
generating one myself, but I don't have the complete -current source at home
yet (where my A4000 is), only syssrc.

Ian.