On Tue, 16 Dec 1997, Vincent PENNE wrote:

> Kaustav Bhattacharya wrote:
> > 
> > Bought RiscBSD 1.3Alpha at Acorn World 97.  Following CD installation
> > file to the T, can't get it to work.  this is the course of events
> > which took place and my hardware config.  Can anyone offer any advice
> > as to why it's going wrong?
> 
> I got the same problem with a hard disk of 3.1Gb. I'm afraid that
> currently RiscBSD does not support too big hard disk

Yes it does. I am currently running RiscBSD on a 4.9 GB Quantum IDE Disc.

> (or maybe is it
> RiscOS that does not support partitionning too big hard disk)

That might be an explanation allthough I am not sure it is correct.

The symptoms Kaustav mentions look like the ones I experienced when
I first tried to install RiscBSD. I must say that I installed RiscBSD
on a un-partitioned disc, so there might be some differences.

However:
I AM NOT SURE THE FOLLOWING IS CORRECT, SO PROCEED ON YOUR OWN RISC!

When I installed RiscBSD on the complete disk, the disk was already
formatted as a RISC OS disk, and hence the RiscBSD installation
procedure refused to disklabel/newfs the disk at all. What I had to
do was to reset the boot-block of the disk before it could be
initialised for RiscBSD. I did that with a disk-editor under RISC OS.
I read somewhere in an installation guide that it could be done
under RiscBSD with the command

cat /dev/zero >/dev/wd0c

allthough I did not figure out, how this command could be executed
and one afterward is able to write the disk format to the disk
via the installation procedure. I tried this method first, but I
never succeeded.

I suggest that you try to erase the boot-block of the partition
on which you want to install RiscBSD. If you are able to see
your RiscBSD partition in a disk-icon on the taskbar under
RISC OS, I guess your problems are caused by a RISC OS initialised
partition.

But remember: I could be completely wrong.

Good luck and a Merry Christmas
  Ib-Michael
-- 
Ib-Michael Martinsen        Email at work: imm@kmd.dk
Fidomail:  2:234/181.9      Email at home: imm@nethotel.dk

Using an Acorn RiscPC with a 202.4 MHz StrongArm processor
running RiscBSD v1.3a :-)