pnaulls@wave.co.nz wrote:
> 
> I've just realised I've lost my RiscBSD partiton to my new RapIDE
> card - looks like the installer has done something to the bootblock
>  - erk.. Has anybody got a fix for this, or, at the very least,
>  some way to recover some of the information?

Sounds very very familiar.

The method I've employed is to ignore the 2 drives that are being used
for riscbsd (note I've got 3 drives, one for risc-os, the others are
riscbsd)  and not tell rapier about them, rerun bb_riscbsd on the drives
and you'll get it booting, note no more native boots.

If you've got one drive I'd suggest making a floppy boot disk for
risc-os, and include the rapier software on it.  Then setup the risc-os
partition on the drive, run bb_riscbsd, and you can boot to riscbsd. 
When you've finished in riscbsd you'll reboot, and need the floppy
disk.  then run rapier and reset the risc-os partition. and lo you'll
have your riscos part, reboot and you'll be able to boot of HD for
risc-os.

Yep it's a big faf(sp) around but it's the only way I've managed, it
seems that rapide is fine until you reboot after having run bb_riscbsd,
after which reach for rapier to partion.  This has not lost you anything
off either partition (full marks to riscbsd for robustness ;) but is a
minor annoyance.  I've got an altered unixfs for v2.0 of the rapier
stuff, (basically it's a small alteration to mountufs basic program,
atafs now starts partitioning drives so numbers them 0-7 not 4-7) I'll
put them on the web somewhere soon.

If you only have one drive I'd suggest reverting back to your old
drivers, they worked, and probably weren't such a farce to deal with.
 
> I am seriously pissed off at Yellowstone - not only because of this,
> but because I had to hack my setup to even get my internal IDE interface
> to talk to my CDROM, and because the instruction manual which comes
> with the card is next to useless in terms of installation instructions.

Ahh the beloved 30 second timeout on the internal interface they said to
me they had a fix and were going to send me it (time to get on the phone
again!)  And yes the manual is kind of unclear at points, the best bit
is the way it asked me where to install the software, I think hmm on my
hard-disc, it thinks nope I've just unplugged the driver modules lets
give an error and hide the HD's (had to install from a ram disc, and put
rapier onto floppy!!!!)
 
> Be warned anybody, you risk losing data if you get a RapIDE.
> I will of course be telling Yellowstone very specifically how I feel.

I made it quite clear I was unimpressed.  They said to me they would get
in contact with the riscbsd team to sort out the problem of partitions,
I suspect they haven't yet.
 
> On a lighter note, how likely is it for the Oak recorder to be
> supported under RiscBSD?  I'm currently trying to dig up info on it for
> RiscOS, so I could probably help anybody if it was done :)
> I realise of course that proper sound support needs to be done for
> RiscBSD, but still :)

Interesting point, if you actually get a driver to work with just a
parallel port, no asm, you could pheasibly use the oak-recorder on any
unix system with a parallel port...

Chris