Hello all,

	Because I received some personal e-mails about installation problems, I
decided to post a status report to this list.

Many people have troubles mounting the msdosfs filesytems on their harddisks.
These problems have not yet been solved. It seems that the Atari/GEM
filesystems are more different to 'standard' MSDOS filesystems than expected.
The problems are not solved yet, Waldi is looking into it as far as I know.
The above imposes severe problems to people trying to install NetBSD. There
are several ways to bypass msdos filesystems:
  - Use tape installation
  - Use floppies. NetBSD/Atari currently supports only floppies up to
    720Kb (another thing to be fixed :-) ). You can either 'dd' to them
    or use an MSDOS fs. The latter _does_ work on NetBSD as long as
    the right device is used: fd0b for 720Kb floppies.
    They can be mounted from the install-fs by: mount_msdos /dev/fd0b /mnt
  - Use a raw partition. If you have access to a dd-program that allows
    you to use a raw partition, put the installation set onto an unused
    partition, the one you wanted to use as swap? (don't label it as NBS
    yet!) You can now boot NetBSD and dd it to a file on one of the
    filesystems created.

Some people complained about TT-HIGH not working. This has been solved in
the new version of the kernel I have here waiting in my outgoing directory.
Unfortunately, sun-lamp has been down since monday so I have not been
able to upload it. I will announce it as soon as it's been uploaded.

Also waiting in my outgoing directory is a new set of install-fs floppies.
Several small bugs have been fixed:
   - You can now remount the root filesystem so that it becomes writable.
     Just type: mount /dev/rd0 /
   - The TERM variable is set correctly to vt200.
   - The Extract function ask you if you are installing a snapshot. For
     the NetBSD/Atari distribution, the answer should be _yes_. This
     takes into account that the set is named 'base.tar.gz' instead of
     'base.xxx' and it will setup the correct 'cwd' for tar.
   - The path to sendmail.cf is setup correctly.
 
Already on sun-lamp (src/etc/etc.atari) is a new MAKEDEV script. It 
creates the missing device node fd0c (although the driver isn't
supporting is correctly right now) and I added some comment to it.
Especially about the floppy devices :-)

Last but not least: The Falcon status. I am currently working on the
SCSI DMA. This will be the last major problem to be fixed on the Falcon.
As I don't own a Falcon myself, the development is rather slow but
steady. Helmar has been testing the Falcon stuff from the beginning.
He has succeeded in installing NetBSD, although it is very very slow as
I currently use the 5380 in REQ/ACK mode. When SCSI is running in
DMA mode, the system is workable and will be released. Then comes
the time that someone has to look into the video-modes. Currently
only ST-HIGH is supported. If you _really_ want to try the current
Falcon kernel, Helmar can give you an ftp address.

Hope this will provide some help...

Leo.