Hello!

In message <9609050947.AA09267@netsu002.oslo.Geco-Prakla.slb.com> you wrote:

> I have never tried to install RiscBSD to a disk with two RISC OS
> partitions, but I believe it should work.

I have such a setup with a Cumana card.
You must not believe what bb_riscbsd tells you. It's quite obvious that you
can't. If I tell it to scan drive 4 it says that it is 1423 cylinders big. If
it scans drive 5 it says this is 818 cylinders big, starting at 0 and ending at
817, which is just wrong - it doesn't start at 0.
Of course you have to add these two cylinder sizes to find the end of the Risc
OS partitions.

> One problem you may run into is the same as I did run into.
> RISC OS is probably using a different logical structure than
> the physical one, and RiscBSD uses the physical one.
> 
> You will therefore have to calculate the figures that bb_riscbsd
> gives you into physical ones. If they do not match on cylinders,
> then just choose the next physical that is not in collision with
> the logical one. I did that, and it works fine.

Hmm, not sure about this one.
How do you calculate this?
My setup seems to work OK, with RiscBSD starting at cylinder 2241. But
occasionally I lose my disklabel, everything is fine again after reinstalling
it. People told me that I might lose it because Risc OS is overwriting it
because the partitions overlap.
I don't think so because it always seems to happen when RiscBSD was running and
not when there was Risc OS activity. But maybe I made a mistake when I laid out
my partitions?

> You should also be aware of the fact that the driver for the
> cumana card will not use the internal terminator, nor the RISC OS
> configuration settings. Also the cumana driver has very poor
> performance at the moment since it is polling and not interrupt
> driven.

Usual question to Scott: Any progress on this subject?

> The installation guide is pretty ok as it is, but the points
> above needs to be taken into account.

You're working on it, right? This guide should really tell people exactly what
to do when installing on a SCSI disk. I can help with the part for Cumana users.