On Sun, 23 Jan 2000, Merideth Johnston wrote:

> .  I did find out that
> the way to get it back on is to simply errase the disk using the zip tool
> meant for the job.  Unfortunately, that utility also wipes out the desired
> partitioning.  (It will let you initiallize it as DOS, but apparently
> doesn't consider that anybody would want to initialize it to another
> alternative)  I found the only way to partition the zip disk at all was to
> initialize it with Apple's HDSC setup (modified for any disk).  Then I
> could custom partition it.  That means, though, that if the zip disk is in
> the drive when the Mac is booted, that disk will be regarded by the system
> as permanent.  which causes the zip extention to blow its mind when I
> reboot NetBSD to get back to the Mac OS.  I can live with it that way, but

Try formatting it as a MacOS zip disk in the zip tools. Then use HDSC to
delete the MacOS parttion on there, and then add your own.

In addition to the MacOs partition, the formatter will often add its own
driver on the disk. I bet that your removal problems are either that
you're using the HDSC one (if it installed one) or the default one, and it
isn't letting you eject. The routine above will ensure that there's a zip
driver on the disk.

> As it is, the installer didn't like the root to be on my hard drive at all
> when I was rearranging things, as the "a" partition is for the Mac.  I
> didn't lose the warnings and fault messages (can't mount root) until I
> reconfigured the partitions on the hard drive to be just usr and swap
> partitions.  The "a" partition on the zip drive apparently must be for
> NetBSD root, too, with the little Mac partition on the outside, as it was
> unhappy with it the other way around.  (I did spend some time twiddling
> with this, didn't I)  With the space needed to include the compilers, I
> kinda need both anyway, but I thought it was peculiar, and wondered if
> that's correct (it wants the a partition for the root no matter what drive
> it is, and doesn't care much/ won't do it/ if it can't get _some_ a
> partition, regardless of the scsi number), or if there is another way of
> doing this that would not have this problem.  Mainly curiosity, that.  I
> think I wore myself out on this today, and I'd like to think I accomplished
> something.  8-)

Note that NetBSD/MacOS partitioning mounts things in a different order
than they are listed in the partition table. We scan the table for
partitions. The first one we find with the correct flags is made into the
"a" partition. It doesn't need to be in a particular place in the MacOS
disklabel.

> Oh, another question I want to ask before it slips my mind - is it possible
> to pass info between the Mac partition and NetBSD partition on the same
> machine, and if so (I would think so...) how?  Is that where local talk
> comes in?  I've never used that.  Would it be like setting up a local
> network between the two, as if they were different machines, except I
> wouldn't need to connect them with any cables?

Localtalk is for linking seperate computers. hfsutils, in the package
system, will let NetBSD access HFS partitions. The installer will be able
to access old-style NetBSD partitions from MacOS (note the ones made with
newfs without the -C option won't work).

Take care,

Bill