On Fri, 15 Nov 1996, Peter Berg wrote:

> > Maybe there should be a list of things that need to be written/done.
> > Any thoughts?
> 
> Here is what I think what could be done:
> 
> fdisk	partitioning tool for the HD's (console)

This is not quite as simple as just writing programs - under Risc BSD you can
have (AFAIK) 3 different schemes for partitioning discs - 

a) devote the entire disc to RiscBSD - partition using
disktab/disklabel/diskpart/newfs

b) Some of the disc is adfs, the Filecore boot block non-adfs partition
descriptor points to the Risc BSD disklabel - most people do this.

c) The Filecore boot block non-adfs partition descriptor points to a RiscIX
partition table - one (or more?) of these is labeled as "RiscBSD" - this is
the Risc BSD partition. - as done by the powertec !scsimgr


As you can see to use all of these different disc partition metholds is
complicated! But what starts happening when you plug in a friends hd from
netbsd/i386 - which has the usual dos FDISK'd slices and one or more of
these is netbsd? I don't know if netbsd has some scheme for pulling disk
partition information of a disc and handing it to other driovers which then
pull more partition information off a disc which passes it to another
drivers which access the files....

(imagine a powertec driven scsi hd with 4 partitons - adfs1, adfs2, dos,
riscbsd - how do you access these from riscbsd? what device names do they
have? - and now suppose that the dos partition is subdivided with fdisk
and contains a netbsd and a linux partition how do you access those?!)

> adfs	ADFS Filesystem driver for floppys and HD's

I have a stack of syquest cartridges I can safely trash when I'm writing
this. Unfortunatly I've just upgraded to a second slice and the four slot
backplane dosn't work (I don't have the old one) so when I get a new one I
will get on with it (I've done a few minor bits).

(on a related note the directory attributes for filecore discs has two
'unusual' bits - 4 & 7 - 7 is reserved and 4 is "Object is executable" which
is treated as a second owner read bit and duplicates bit 0. I know that
under Risc OS there are a few hacked filer's that use these bits for vairous
purposes - if anyone beleives these to be inportant wrt Risc BSD can they
tell me what they do and what they want them to do under Risc BSD - similary
if people want support for Jason Tribbecs (sp!)  LongFilenames and who ever
it is's LinkFS (linkfs is a tad harder to do) say so). 


> midi	DMI50 tty driver
> vidclib	like the svgalib on PC's, to make programs able to bring some graphics
> 	on the screen without a huge and slow windowing system

It would be nice if they where compaterble ;-) - even better would be to get
a cross platform standard writtern - this is a netbsd thing tho.

-- 
Jasper Wallace-Internet Vision | Caving-Acorn-RiscBSD-Chocolate-Banks-Fish
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