Hi,

>Having run bb_riscbsd and configured the bootloader, I clicked 'BOOT' only
>to be rewarded with a tasteful set of coloured bands at the top of an
>otherwise grey screen.

Ok I cannot remember the exact colours but

grey screen - Ready to start final boot strap stage.
1st stripe  - RiscOS page tables patched to allow kernel to be place at top
              of physical memory.
2nd stripe  - All IRQ's etc disabled.
3rd stripe  - Kernel argument string copied to bootconfig.argvirtualbase.
4th stripe  - Various bits of kernel workspace zeroed
5th stripe  - Kernel binary code copied to bootconfig.kernvirtualbase.

Depending on your bootloader you may have a 6th stripe which indicates
sucessful switch to scv32 mode

If it gets that far then all it has left to do it switch to svc32 mode and
execute the kernel.

A hangup at this point is usually due to a faulty kernel.
You don't mention which kernel it is.

All I can suggest is check the size of the decompressed kernel
Guessing at the two most likely kernels you are booting with the sizes should
be

-rwxr-xr-x    1 ftpadm   ftp      1318041 Sep  8 12:33 bsd-4554
-rwxr-xr-x    1 ftpadm   ftp      1331496 Sep  8 12:33 bsd-4626

>Hform initially wouldn't format the whole thing, and ART kindly sent an
>unreleased version. I suspect it failed because the total disk capacity in
>bytes is higher than the capacity of a signed integer.
>Might the bootloader have a similar capacity problem?

The only disc activity in the bootloader is to load the kernel binary from
RiscOS. This is done with OS_Find and OS_GBPG so that should work fine with
your drive (All bootloader disc access is done through ADFS.

The stripes basically mean it loaded a kernel into memory and if all the
stripes
mentioned above are there then it mean it tried to execute the kernel.
Kernel corruption/faulty decompression is the only thing I can think of.

Cheers,
				Mark

PS. Does anyone know of any good checksum programs for RiscOS ? Even better if
they were compat with unix checksums (e.g. cksum) That way I code post
checksums for the decompressed kernels along with each kernel.

-- 
Mark Brinicombe				amb@physig.ph.kcl.ac.uk
Research Associate			http://www.ph.kcl.ac.uk/~amb/
Department of Physics			tel: 0171 873 2894
King's College London			fax: 0171 873 2716