Various tweaks and clarifications, and drop obsolete information regarding

last century's hard disks on this century's platforms.

diff --git a/distrib/notes/amd64/prep b/distrib/notes/amd64/prep
index 461b907..3333da7 100644 (file)
--- a/distrib/notes/amd64/prep
+++ b/distrib/notes/amd64/prep
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-dnl    $OpenBSD: prep,v 1.4 2005/03/18 23:40:36 miod Exp $
+dnl    $OpenBSD: prep,v 1.5 2008/08/05 23:05:12 miod Exp $
 NOTE: If you wish to install OpenBSD on your whole disk, i.e. you do not
 want any other operating system to reside on your hard disk, you can skip
 this section and go on to the section that describes installation, below.
@@ -11,13 +11,13 @@ SURE YOU HAVE A RELIABLE BACKUP of any data on your hard disk that you
 wish to keep.  Repartitioning your hard disk is an excellent way to
 destroy important data.
 
-Second, if you are using a disk controller which supports disk geometry
-translation, be sure to use the same parameters for OpenBSD as for the
-other operating systems installed on your disk.  If you do not, it will
-be much harder to make OpenBSD properly coexist with them.
 dnl
 dnl All this text below is probably completely unapplicable to amd64,
 dnl as they don't have BIOS that old and crappy...
+dnl Second, if you are using a disk controller which supports disk geometry
+dnl translation, be sure to use the same parameters for OpenBSD as for the
+dnl other operating systems installed on your disk.  If you do not, it will
+dnl be much harder to make OpenBSD properly coexist with them.
 dnl
 dnl Utilities exist which will print out the disk geometry which DOS sees;
 dnl some versions of DOS "fdisk" also do this.  If you have an "EIDE" hard
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ dnl supported part of the hard disk -- this would typically be 504MB, 2GB or
 dnl 8GB, depending upon the age of the machine and its BIOS.
 
 dnl Fourth, use the other operating system's "fdisk" program or partition
-Third, use the other operating system's "fdisk" program or partition
+Second, use the other operating system's "fdisk" program or partition
 editor to create at least one of the partitions to be used for that
 operating system.  If that operating system is already set up to use the
 entire disk, you will have to back it up, remove and recreate a smaller

diff --git a/distrib/notes/armish/prep b/distrib/notes/armish/prep
index d01788b..a6c5b8f 100644 (file)
--- a/distrib/notes/armish/prep
+++ b/distrib/notes/armish/prep
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-dnl    $OpenBSD: prep,v 1.13 2008/03/10 21:34:14 miod Exp $
+dnl    $OpenBSD: prep,v 1.14 2008/08/05 23:05:14 miod Exp $
 To be able to boot the OpenBSD/MACHINE installation program, you will
 need to learn a bit about RedBoot, the low-level process that controls
 the microprocessor after hardware initialization.
@@ -7,11 +7,12 @@ dnl XXX bootable partitions
 The enabled features between IOData HDL-G and Thecus N2100 vary, so
 different methods will be needed on both machines.
 
-Thecus cannot load a file from disk, but can load an image
-from flash or network.
-IOData can load an image from disk (ext2fs), however the commands
-to load from flash are not available and network booting does not appear
-to work.
+All these machines use RedBoot as their firmware and boot loader
+interface, with varying limitations.  Thecus systems cannot load a
+file from disk, but can load an image from flash or network.  IOData
+systems are more restricted, and can only load an image from ext2fs
+partitions on disk, while the commands to load from flash are not
+available and network booting does not appear to work.
 
 Talking to the Thecus
 
@@ -292,17 +293,17 @@ so far.
 
 To install OpenBSD, boot linux, and copy 'boot' and 'bsd.rd' into the
 partition mounted on /dev/hda1, after that has been done, it is possible
-to reboot into OpenBSD and install the device. Installation can proceede
+to reboot into OpenBSD and install the device. Installation can proceed
 as on other machines, however care must be take to not remove wd0i/hda1
 partition (fdisk partition 0). DO NOT chose the 'full disk installation'
 option.
 
 Unfortunately, since IODATA did not provide the 'fconfig' command it
-is not possible to change the boot commands run when redboot launches,
-So it not possible to autoboot. Eventually 'boot' may be built such
-that it can be loaded as 'zImage', but not now. To disable autobooting
-into linux, zImage and initrd can be renamed or removed. The presence of 
-bsd.rd will allow manipulation of that parition.
+is not possible to change the boot commands run when RedBoot starts,
+thus it not possible to autoboot OpenBSD; the OpenBSD/MACHINE bootloader
+is currently unable to work when loaded as `zImage'.  Futhermore, to
+disable autobooting into Linux, at least one of the zImage and initrd files
+need to be renamed or removed.  This can be done from the shell in bsd.rd.
 
 To load the ramdisk kernel to install use the commands
 
@@ -315,3 +316,6 @@ kernels.
     RedBoot> load -m disk hda1:/boot
     RedBoot> go
 
+Since this bootloader is able to boot any kernel from the OpenBSD root
+partition, it is not necessary to keep bsd.rd on the hda1 partition after
+OpenBSD is installed.