> The actual geometry of a MSCP disk is gotten from the controller, but
> it is not used inside the kernel. If a new unlabeled MSCP disk is attached 
> to a NetBSD/vax system, a default disklabel is filled in with the
> geometry reported from the hardware.

Some controllers - especailly early microcode revisions - report back
"0" for these fields.  I think most of the confusion stems from this,
though the fact that disklabel complains about partitions that
don't start and end on cylinder boundaries is still pretty
irritating.

> The installation tools will change to a much easier system in the
> near future.

Just some notes about the relevance (or irrelevance) of such parameters
would help newbies a lot.  For most of the folks who have been
reading port-vax for some time, all this is "well-known", but somebody
just starting now would tend to be confused.

It's not so much that the tools have to be changed, but the documentation
and FAQ's are sorely out of sync with reality.  For instance, the "ts"
driver (TSV05/TS11/TU80/emulations) has been broken for years, and this point
has been much discussed on the port-vax list, but the FAQ and list
of "official supported hardware" still list it as working.  I know
of a lot of folks who have attempted to install the VAX port but had
to give up when they ran into documentation problems.

Tim. (shoppa@triumf.ca)