On Fri, 24 Jan 1997, Marc Theisen wrote:

> ... <Hardware-Info>
> wd0 <Harddisc-Info>
> fd0 at fdc0 drive 1: density unknown
> rd0 ...
> swap dev 1009 -> -512 bytes
> ...
> Loading ramdisc: 0Kpanic: Cannot load floppy image
> ...<Debugging stuff>
> 
> At this stage, everything I could do was typing CTRL-D to reboot.
> 
> Ok, is it possible that RiscBSD does not understand my PC floppy drive?
> I had to exchange my original HD-floppy with a standard PC drive and now
> RISC-OS hangs for one second before doing the RAM-tests.

Ok the kernel is finding a drive but the drive appears to actually respond
as drive 1 rather than drive 0. This may just be a case of a switch on the
drive.

The loading ramdisc panic is because as the kernel starts the load (the 0K
is part of the load count) it cannot read the floppy.
It cannot read it due to the density being unknown. This is because the
kernel cannot sense the density. NetBSD/i386 gets the density from the
CMOS settings (I mention this as our fd drive is base on the i386 one)
The NetBSD/arm32 fd drive assumes that drive 0 is a 3.5 1.44MB drive.
However it does not make any assumptions about drive 1 (since mornally
RPC's only support 1 FD).

Solution:
1. sort the drive out to respond as drive 0
2. From the text you used the boot device /dev/rd0a. This speicifs that
root should be a ramdisc and loaded from /dev/fd0a. Partition a on a
floppy means use the default density. Other parition letters select diff
densities
i.e.

b - 1.44MB 3.5
c - 1.2MB 5.25
d - 360 5.25 (in 1.2MB drive)
e - 360 5.25
f - 720 3.5
g - 720 (in a 1.2MB drive)
h - 360 (in a 720KB drive)

SO you should try selecting /dev/rd0b as your boot device.
                                    ^

This will use the ramdisc and load it from fd0 (which ever physical drive
it is) and will treat it as a 1.44MB floppy.

Hope this clarifies things.

Cheers,
				Mark