David Browlee wrote:

[snip]

> 	Castle got in touch regarding drivers for some of their cards -
> 	they may still have a copy of a driver, and also would be willing
> 	to give technical documentation on the Kinetic card.

> 	Riscstation loaned us a machine to test NetBSD - there were issues
> 	with the bootloader, but they would be very willing to ship a loan
> 	machine to a developer to work on support.

It's good that they want to help out. I seem to remember hardware people
being unhelpful to anyone a couple of years or more back.

[snip]

I'd like to thank Chris for putting together such a nice CD.

> 	Action items from the show:
> 	If anyone can help with any of these - please let us know.

[snip]

> 	    - !BtRiscBSD
> 		- Can people confirm if the RiscOS4 fixed version of !BtRiscBSD
> 		  also works under 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7?

It definitely worked under 3.7 as Dave Daniels let me test it out
last year while I was still using 3.7. I imagine it should be fine under
3.5 and 3.6 still.

> 		- We need to find out if we can distribute memfix inside
> 		  !BtRiscBSD for RiscOS 4 users.
> 		- !BtRiscBSD defaults to 1024x768 - users with monitors unable
> 		  to display that resolution need to exit a config file to
> 		  run - that should be fixed.
> 		- The number of supported resolutions should be expanded.
> 		- Need to determine if !BtRiscBSD can boot gzipped kernels.

I occasionally used to forget to gunzip the kernels from the NetBSD ftp
site before getting BtRiscBSD to boot them. It never worked for me.

> 		- Is !BtRiscBSD 'max proc' configure option still needed?

It seem to remember it still kicks in - I have seen error messages related
to the number of processes when trying to run >64 processes.

> 	    - Other RiscOS based install issues:
> 		- We should probably include the basic program that when runs
> 		   generates a copy of !sparkplug or similar, to ensure people
> 		   can extract the !BtRiscBSD archive. Does anyone have a copy?
> 		- Does anyone know of a RiscOS tool that can shrink a
> 		  filecore partition?

There isn't one AFAIK, although Matthias Seifert once suggested some ways
it might be done. I think various other people weren't entirely convinced
it would work usefully. It was mainly suggested as part of a way to
convert E format harddiscs to E+ ones. 

> 	    - sysinst issues:
> 		- Need to determine if setting vt100 for sysinst fixes
> 		  a small display glitch when extracting sets.
> 		- Need to test loading sets from an existing filecore partition

I had some problems in the past with sets not being correctly copied from
a filecore partition. It was around 1.4-something but I don't now if the
filecore reading routines have changed since then (was it Andrew McMurry
who did those?).

> 		- Sysinst should have an option to reuse existing partitions
> 		- Sysinst should not ping dns server

> 	    - hardware/software support
> 		- We need people to test their ide, scsi, and other cards
> 		  under 1.5 and report back what works and does not.

My Yellowstone RapIDE32 card works fine, although I used to have problems
reading from CD when the CD-ROM drive was attached to it. Putting the
CD-ROM on the internal interface solved those problems.

> 		- We should approach more hardware vendors for samples and
> 		  documentation.
> 		- We need a 16bit audio driver.
> 		- Should have fsck_filecore - to check filecore partitions
> 		- Filecore support should be extended to support writing
> 		- Add support for the new 'long filenames' version of filecore.

> 	If anyone is interested in helping with any of the above, assisting
> 	at future shows, or anything related to NetBSD/arm{26,32}, please
> 	get in touch. We may be attending the December 2 show in the
> 	midlands (more details later).

I'd like to get involved somewhere, it's probably more a question of
where/how.
-- 
Andy Wingate <URL:http://www.ox.compsoc.net/~xyzzy/>
Oh dear, you seem to have gotten yourself killed.