On Wed, 25 Oct 2000, Kjetil B. Thomassen wrote:
> There has been a lot of talk about installing NetBSD/arm32 1.5 lately,

Yep, I'm hoping to get some activity on this front again.

> and this prompted me to check on the status of two of my PRs:
> port-arm32/8786
>   [open doc-bug] Prep file for RISC OS is not included with Install
>                  documentation
> port-arm32/8787
>   [open doc-bug] Prep file for RISC OS needs to be updated
>
> There does not seem to have been taken any action on either of them, and
> that is very disappointing.

They're not the only PR's open awaiting something to happen (some are over a 
year old!)

> I think that both of these should be fixed before 1.5 is released, and
> especially the former.

Yes, but it's a matter of time on someone's part.

> I hope to be able to test NetBSD/1.5_BETA on my Risc PC 600 with Power-tec
> SCSI-2, and two Acorn SCSI cards if I can get the original ROMs for the
> latter in time.

Excellent :)

> Also, PR 9226 also is still at open.

hmmm.  Is this any better in 1.5 alpha or beta?

> My problem is that my time is very limited, but I will test any kernel
> that people throw at me.
>
> I also discovered a problem with (I think) 1.4.x that it just panics when
> I try to run the install kernel on my Risc PC with my current Power-tec
> primary drive formatted to 1.5GB for RISC OS. This is with RISC OS 4.02.
>
> Gary Partis of Partis Computing (http://www.partis.org.uk/) has agreed to
> help anyone in the NetBSD team asking for information, so I think that
> someone with kernel knowledge should contact him
> (mailto:gary@partis.org.uk) to get the details needed.

Excellent, quite a few people at the acorn show were willing to give info and 
hardware as well.

> There are also the problems with PowerROMs being identified as Power-tec
> cards, but there does not seem to be a PR on that. I could submit one if
> no-one else picks up that ball.

The problem is that the power-roms break the required info, and there's no 
way to detect the underlying card (although looking at the podulebus 
detection code there's a way to force a podule to be something by giving it a 
specific manufacturer's and product id code...

> Again, Gary has come up with some information that I can post to this list
> if needed, or you could contact him. The information is very technical in
> nature, so I think that a person familiar with the Risc PC kernel
> architecture should contact him for details.

Cheers,
Chris