Subject: A5000 still being a pain in the arse

From: Ian Molton <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 06:23:03 +0100

Well, more on the A5k...

It's still a 4meg one (no-one seems to want to offer me a cheap u/g :-(

I have got for it (after catastropic failure of it's IDE disc, a
replacement harddisc.

I bought it a SCSI one (second hand, but working) it's 1Gb

I have a 200Meg IDE in the same machine

I also have an Acorn SCSI I card.

I have SCSIdm (which is pants, but....)

I am now stuck

I can format the disc, which I have, once. 0 defects.

I then tried to work out how to 'initialise' it. I can either dedicate
(using SCSIDM) about 1/2 the disc to ADFS, and none to RISC ix, OR I can
dediate  some to RISC OS /and RISC ix

either way, I'm screwed because !Partman wont create anything on the first
of the two methods, and will only create RISC ix partitions using the
second method. What do I do?

suggestions like 'kick it' arent helpful... dont suggest them anyway,
because there's a substantial chance I may do just that,...

-- 
-Ian aka Lennier
Acorn Computers, the best in the world
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hawk/
BaBe - Womens human rights organisation in Croatia
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hawk/babe/
unsubscribe: body of `unsubscribe linux-arm' to [email-masked]

---

From: Stefan Hanske <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 17:56:02 +0200 (METDST)

> second method. What do I do?

Installing on an 4MB a5k is a pain, I agree. You should format the SCSI 
HD with SCSIDM with both, RiscOS and RiscIX partitions. Linux reads the 
RiscIX partition table and can handle the Risc ix partition, I've tried 
it on my RiscPC where I had the same problem. The space the IX partition 
uses will be allocated under RiscOS, so you can't overwrite it.

You will then have to format the RiscIX partition under Linux (with 
mke2fs, as usual) and thats all. The kernel will not report any Linux 
partitions, but don't mind that cause 'mount' doesn't bother.
Maybe you have to change the bootloader to -bootkernel automatically, but 
RMK said that more partition table formats will be supported soon by 
!PartMan (and maybe !Linux).

As I remember, you've got a RiscPC, too. Why don't you use that to 
install on the a5k???
You can copy the whole directory structure (except /dev) to the scsi disc.
Make a dir called 'dev' in the root dir of it, copy MAKEDEV there an run it 
there. The last you have to do is to change the link fpem.o to fpem-2.87.o. 

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