>My spec is as follows : 24+2MB RPC 600, 850MB + 425MB Conner dics, AKF60
>monitor. I plan to extend this by buying a Yellowstone IDE card (Yes, I
>know they aren't yet supported), with a cheap quad speed CD-ROM drive and
>a cheap 540 MB disc. I will then switch my 850 disc onto the card, put
>the 540 ion the internal, format it to 512MB, copy mthe contents of the
>850MB disc onto that, reformat the 850MB with the new filecore fto 850 MB
>and put the contents of the 540MB back onto that. This disc will then be
>re-formatted as a RiscBSD disc using the whole (or as much as possible
>below the 512MB barrier) disc for RiscBSD.

I think I follow that ...

why below the 512MB barrier if you have the new filecore ? The latest version
of unixfs supports the new filecore.

>My questions are : Am I able to get hold of a CD-ROM with RiscBSD on it
>(I know they are available from time to time but I would like a 1.2
>release when it becomes available) ? If so, who do I conbtact for details ?

The first availablity of 1.2 CDROM's is planned for AW96.

>Dopes anybody have any comments on my ideas here (the CD will be copied
>to the RiscBSD patitiona by UNixFRS). If anybody thinks they are
>fundamentally flawed, can they suggest a way to do something similar for
>say under 350 quid ? (The above comes to around 300).
Well it depends on whether RiscBSD could share space on one of your existing
drives. If you did not want the CDROM permenantly connected it may be possible
to do it without the RapIDE and just an extra harddrive and a load of disc
swapping.

Sadly there is no simple solution ;-(

PS. One day soon we may get somewhere with the RapIDE card. If I cannot get
anywhere this month, I'll be cornering them that AW96

>How much of a change is the StrongARM going to cause - are we talking
>just a new kernel or replacing/recompiling most of the programs/utilities.

Definitely a new kernel. Eventually I would like to have a generic kernel that
supported all ARM's however the different cache structure and abort behaviour
mean that StrongARM support is a kernel compile time option.

I do not expect very much to change. The major problem that RiscOS programs
have been affected by is self modifing code etc. Under un*x the text area of a
process is read only so the problem of inconsistancies with the icache does not
exist.

There will however by an architecure specific library libarm32.a appearing soon
which will contain a function that will allow a user process sync the icache
but I do not expect any existing software to need to use it.

So far all my SA test boots have use 1.2-beta binaries with a SA kernel.

Cheers,
				Mark


-- 
Mark Brinicombe				amb@physig.ph.kcl.ac.uk
Research Associate			http://www.ph.kcl.ac.uk/~amb/
Department of Physics			tel: 0171 873 2894
King's College London			fax: 0171 873 2716