Subject: SPARCstation partitioning
To: None <port-sparc@netbsd.org>
From: Andy Ball <andy.ball@earthlink.net>
List: port-sparc
Date: 07/14/2003 10:01:35
Hello,

Last night I finally made time to tinker with my
SPARCstation 1+ again.  I was able to boot the 1.6.1 install
diskettes and I believe it is able to see an external Zip
drive that I may use to hold the binary sets during the
installation.

I'm not at all familiar with the SPARCstation firmware.  It
says its V1.3 and I'm told that it's OpenBoot (part of Open
Firmware?)

Thinking about how I'll partition the disk, I'm not sure
where (if?!) to leave space for a partition map.  I am more
familiar with the i386 port, where I leave the first track
of cylinder 0 aside for a boot sector, partition map etc. Do
I need to do something similar for my SPARCstation?

The reported geometry is 6810     Cylinders  Size  Use    
cylinders, 4 heads, 151 sectors   ~~~~~~~~~  ~~~~  ~~~~~~~
per track. I'm thinking of some     0- 216    217  /
-thing like this:                 217- 433    217  (swap)
                                  434-6809   6376  /usr

I'm making this up as I go along, so constructive
observations or advice would be welcome!  :-)

- Andy Ball