> 
> Hi,
> 
> Has anyone got a 1.5a2 installation kernel?? I am after reinstalling
> netbsd on either an idefs (simtec) hard drive  or a cumana scsi2-linked
> 4.5gb hard drive. Will the installation on either of these card work??
> Which is the best one to use for netbsd nowadays?? 
>
IDE. There have been no updates to the Cumana SCSI driver AFAIK. I 
suspect Chris Gilbert may have 1.5ALPHA2 install kernels as a side 
effect of his CD preparations for the RiscOS 2000 show NetBSD stand. 


> I have previously used netbsd on the idefs card, but after upgrading to
> riscos 4 i reformatted all the machines drives and deleted netbsd. Since
> then attempts to reinstall using a 1.4 installation kernel on the idefs
> card have failed with an odd error, possibly linked to the f+ format of
> the idefs drive i am trying to use. bb_riscbsd is reporting negative
> values (for some reason) - i assume this isn't helping matters, since
> the installation kernel boots, probes the hardware and returns correct
> devices, then gets to the bit where sysinst is run and says the
> simtec card/hd/cable may be faulty, then the installer gets stuck not
> being able to see the hard drive....
> Any recommendations anyone??
> 
The card/cable fault error is not a problem. My machine sometimes boots 
reporting that but the drives work just fine. The problem is that 
unless bb_riscbsd is run there is nothing to tell NetBSD where the end 
of your filecore partition is. When formatting the IDE disk did you 
leave a space for NetBSD? IIRC the Simtec formatter can do the same 
magic that bb_riscbsd does anyway assuming that you don't make the 
filecore partition take up the whole disk. 

Mike

Mike