format.dat -> disk_type and partition tables

[jaz at calvin.icd.ab.com]

I just bought a SPARCstation 1. Along with it I bought a 3rd party SCSI
hard disk. Does the SUN OS 4.03 for the SPARC, walk you through creation
of the disk_type and partition tables for 3rd party disks, or do you add
them to the format.dat on the RAM disk during installation ? Also, I can't
seem to find anywhere in the documentation where the table entries are
defined.  For example, under disk_type, Here is a listing of the entries
with question marks on the ones I am not sure about.

ctlr		- Controller type
fmt_time	- ??
cache		- ??
trks_zone	- ??
asect		- Alternate sectors. (Is this per cylinder ??)
ncyl		- Number of cylinders
acyl		- Alternate cylinders
pcyl		- Physical cylinders
nhead		- number of heads
nsect		- number of sectors (I assume per head ??)
rpm		- at least I know what this means
btp		- bytes per track

Could someone explain the disk_type parameters to me, or recommend a
manual to consult ? The Sun installation guide does not explain this.
They also do not walk you through installation of 3rd party SCSI disks.

As far as the partition table goes, can someone give me an idea of what an
average partition would be for a 350 MB drive on a single user Sparc 1
running sunos 4.03 ? For example:

partition A	- 16MB
partition B	- 32MB	(I was told you want more than 16MB on a sparc)
partition C	- 350MB
partition G	- (C minus (A plus B))

Is this what I really want, or should I use another partition for /home.
What is the significance of having a home partition or not ?

Thanks in advance,
Jack A. Zucker		jaz at calvin.icd.ab.com