On Wednesday 30 May 2001  9:36 pm, Chris Walker wrote:
> Hi,

Hi Chris,

> Some years ago I installed RiscBSD which I think is now called NetBSD. I
> managed the install on my Risc PC without too many problems then. Sadly not
> so this time. I'm installing it on a Cumana SCSI II drive, as last time,
> but this time it's falling over with these messages -
>
> boot device sd0
> root on sd0a dumps on sd0b

That's what it should display...

> I don't find that too surprising - I haven't created it yet. I thought the
> initial kernel load would allow me to do that. I've partitioned the 2 gig
> drive, I've mapped it as SCSI 4, with 69 megs for Risc OS and the rest for
> BSD, written the boot block with bb_riscbsd and chosen the kernel and
> pointed the !BtRiscBSD prog at it. The kernel is shown as netbsd/RISCPC/gz
> on the ftp site and this file has a file size of 845448 bytes 

Ahh, you want RPCINST.gz (assuming you're doing 1.5?) from:
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.5/arm32/installation/kernel/

> just in
> case I'm using the wrong one! I've unzipped that, filetyped it to data as
> the !Bt.. app told me that the unzipped file was the wrong filetype. It's
> such a long time since I did the first install, and almost as long since I
> changed the drive and didn't bother to install it again, that I can't
> remember what I did. I hope to persevere a bit longer this time ;-)

Well I beleive that our scsi support has improved in recent years, so you 
should find performance ok on the cumana.  In fact if you want to help 
improve the driver (possibly not for the faint hearted)  cumana has said 
they'd be willing to release the tech docs (or that's what they said at epsom 
last year)

> I'd appreciate any help you people can give and just in case somebody says
> 'have you the docs?', yes. I spent about an hour and a half last night
> wading through the mail archives since early 1998 trying to find something
> relevant to the problem. I didn't but I did find a URL that pointed me to
> the prep docs. According to prep/RISCOS, I've done everything I need to as
> far as the drive partitioning goes, I get as far as 4.2 'Running
> !BtRiscBSD' and that's where it all starts to go wrong.

Looks like the wrong kernel, at one time the RISCPC was the right kernel, and 
you used a boot floppy, but that's changed, the boot floppy is now inside the 
install kernel, which makes things easier :)  You'll need the RISCPC kernel 
to actually boot for real eventually.

Cheers,
Chris

PS if you're making any notes on this, we'd be grateful to have them written 
up, we do lack documentation on installing.