thus Jonathan Essex spake:
> Many thanks,
> 
> Sorry to say, though, it didn't work: newfs on the 2.0.2 iso image
> crashed and burned just the same on a partition created by Drive Setup.
> 
> Curiously, I got a little further with the 1.6.2 iso :- it at least
> allowed my to format the smaller ('root') partition. It also core dumped
> more gracefully when I tried to format the bigger ('usr') partition; I'm
> guessing now that the reason the 2.0.2 iso blows up quite so
> spectacularly is that there's not space for the core dump in the
> installation cd's root partition (presumably some kind of ram disk...)
> 
> Sadly, I'm not up to interpreting the core dump.
> 
> Interestingly, when I was installing OS9 in order to copy the boot
> loader over to the hfs partition, I had some problems there, too.
> Beginning to wonder if the darned machine isn't just broken...
> 
> Cheers
> Jon

hm, do you have some (Mac OS [X] based) tools like Tech Tool or similar
to test the machine? i'd do this next...

cheers,

timo