m. d. walker <mwalker@en.com> wrote:

>I sincerely apologize if I have insulted your skills as a programmer,
>computer user, or as a individual. That was never my intention. My only
>intention was to document the steps necessary for me to solve this problem,
>and to possibly help other users who have encountered these errors, solve
>them.

Mike,

I don't feel you insulted me or my limited skills.  There are some 
problems with setting up disks and SCSI disk handling in general under 
NetBSD, but they haven't been completetly isolated yet.  The problem, 
whatever it is, only seems to appear on some systems with certain disks, 
and that makes it extremely difficult to isolate and fix. Usually when a 
new user gets past the inital problems with Mkfs they are no longer in a 
position to help with the problem. That's understandable, but very 
frustrating for someone trying to find a solution to the problem.

My main frustration is in trying to keep some incorrect information from 
leading other new users astray.  A couple of years ago when I was working 
on Mkfs I make an incorrect statment about an "off by one error" in the 
Partition Map (due to a programming error on my part).  I'm still paying 
the price for that and continue to hear from users who are certain 
they've run into that very problem.  You'd be amazed at the number of 
users who follow some voodoo setup instructions to get around 
non-existant problems just because of a little mis-information.  Like you 
they search the archives and come up with all sorts of historic 
recomendations, fixes and explainations.

The NetBSD FAQ is a fantastic source of information and has been kept 
up-to-date by the tireless efforts of Colin Wood.  It should be the 
first, and primary, source of information for the new user (in my 
opinion).  Colin is an old hand at running NetBSD/mac68k and does a very 
good job of validating the information before inserting it into the FAQ.  
The Mailing list is also a great source of inforamtion for the new user, 
but not all the suggestions are backed by the same level of experience, 
understanding and quality found in the FAQ.

-bob