[armedslack] Updates

[Stuart Winter]

> > You contacted me a while ago about the RiscPC?
> >
> Yup I've one of those

It's amazing that they still go strong even after 16 years or so!
Although my main one is starting to play up on me now when booting Linux,
unless it's just a bug in GRUB.

> What's involved in making a RiscPC bootable ISO ?  Not familiar with
> the process myself.

Not a lot really!  It's basically just a case of putting the !SlackBt
application into the filesystem, adding the RISC OS filetypes
to the filenames (say !Run,ffb for an 'Obey' file), and using a patched
mkisofs that translates these file names into RISC OS file types proper.

I have scripts to do it, some of which are based on Pat's scripts that
he uses to build the real Slackware ISOs, which he doesn't want to
release, so I can't release mine either unless I basically rewrite them
all.

> I've been messing around via NFS ... but as I had a bit of trouble
> getting a modern hard disk to work in the RiscPC, I couldn't squeeze
> the gigabytes of stuff I wanted into a 1.2Gb drive, and the silly
> Seagate isn't usable with the onboard IDE ..

No?  I will have to have a look at that.  I haven't put a large hard disk
onto the motherboard IDE for a while now, but I have a 120GB or so sitting
around so I will see if it recognises it in RISC OS, and perhaps make a
RISC OS partition using !Hform, then see what Linux makes of the disk.

> though, plus I seem to remember someone mentioned that the PowerTec
> SCSI boards will cause lock ups in Linux so I wouldn't be able to use
> that (that true ?).

That's true, unfortunately - as soon as the PT driver sees the PT card, it
would kernel panic - which is why I do not compile the PowerTec
drivers into the Kernel.

Unforuntately unless someone
 a - has a PT card
 b - knows Linux enough to fix it , and
 c - cares

it's not going to get fixed.

> I vote you make ISOs for RiscPCs ;-)

I will do soon.  I am just bringing -current up to date with
slackware-current, including glibc-2.7 and other bits.

I would set a date but I know I can't keep it -- life gets in
the way, fortunately :-)

However, you don't need a Risc PC bootable disc to get going.
I wonder if DVD drives work on the RiscPC -- they probably do
under Linux. If you can put !SlackBt onto your RISC OS partition,
then you could boot into the installer and potentially just
install from a DVD, if you make your own DVD of armedslack.
I can give you the commands to make a dvd ISO file of it
if you want to try -- I don't know if it will work though :-)

s.