Kjetil wrote:
>> >I tried to use my Acorn SCSI card with my HP C3325A SCSI drive.
>> >This drive was formatted 400 MB to RISC OS.
>> >I am very persistant, and I this refuse to install it to an IDE drive
>> >first as I did the first time I installed RiscBSD. As a matter of 
>> >fact, I do not even have a suitable IDE drive for RiscBSD. The
>> >210 MB I have is my boot disc, and too small for RiscBSD anyway.
 
Stuart wrote:
>> But you could put a boot partition on it, and put most other RiscBSD
>> stuff on the SCSI drive? Surely the nature of beta releases is that we m=
ay
>> have to compromise a little on our ideal solutions, in order to get thin=
gs
>> running?

Kim wrote:
>That is a totally unnecessary complication. I am quite sure there
>are quite a lot of people that dont use RiscBSD because they
>dont want the risk of repartition their harddisk, which probably
>is full anyway. The second IDE slot is probably used up by a
>CD-ROM.
>The natural thing is to buy an SCSI disk for NetBSD, which use
>SCSI disks on the other systems anyway. I bought an optical PD.

1. If people don't want the 'risk' of re-partitioning their hard disc, then
that implies inadequate back-up facilties in which case they shouldn't be
contemplating RiscBSD. 

2. The 'natural' solution of buying a SCSI interface plus a large SCSI disc=
 is
at least three times as expensive as buying a larger IDE drive. My net cost=
 of
going 420Mb to 1.6Gb was =A3135 inc VAT, and prices are falling. The SCSI
equivalent, including buying a SCSI interface supported by RiscBSD would be
well over =A3400.

Kim wrote:
>You cant do development on the pitifully small IDE disks which
>are in common use.

Most people starting out with RiscBSD won't have 300Mb+ free, so they'll ne=
ed
to buy a new drive in any case. I wasn't suggesting that small IDE drives
would be adequate for anything.

>And what about me: I work professionally as a unix system administrator,
>and know perfectly well how to develop unix programs, yet with NetBSD
>on the RiscPC, I cant get anything done, and i have mounted on
>a partitioned IDE drive. The reason? I dont have a HD on my
>cumana scsi card. I have an optical PD instead. This makes the
>boot sequence crash. Programming like that sucks.

No, it more likely means that the team can't be expected to write drivers t=
hat
will work with every possible drive or device, especially if they haven't g=
ot
access to those drives or devices.

>However, I could rewrite it myself if I could boot and compile, which
>I cant. The chicken and egg problem.

Back-up your Risc OS stuff to the optical; repartition to use almost the wh=
ole
IDE drive to boot and compile; write the RiscBSD drivers for the optical,an=
d
re-compile to get a system using the optical drive. Then repartition and
reload your Risc OS stuff. Hardly elegant, but a solution to the 'chicken a=
nd
egg'. Unless your IDE is _really_ small. ;-)

Cheers,

PS No need to post directly to me as well as the mailing list - I just end =
up
with two copies.  ;-)

-- 
*** Stuart Bell (sabell@argonet.co.uk)        Running Risc OS and ***
***      RiscBSD on an Acorn Risc PC in a Wintel-free environment ***