Jim.Wegman@rochgte.fidonet.org (Jim Wegman) (03/10/91)
I just purchased PC MINIX 1.5 and I am in desparate need of help to gget it up and running.
My system consists of a Hyundai 16TE XT Compatible, 640K, 2 360K ffloppies, a 65M Seagate ST277R1 RLL hard drive with a Seagate ST11R RLL controller, VGA.
With my hard drive controller attached to the system, MINIX will nnot boot with any of the MINIX boot disks ( giving the message ''Boot failed. Press any key to reboot.' ).
With the hard drive controller removed from the system, MINIX will bboot and run with all all boot disks except the universal boot disk.
I understand that, as purchased, MINIX does not support RLL drives because of the increased number of sectors per track. Would this discreprency cause the system not to boot with the hard drive ppresent? I was going to change sectors per track value in the mminix/config.h file and rebuild the system, but with only 2 360K ffloppy drives, I can't even decompress the kernel source archives,nno less compile them!
Does anyone know if rebuilding the system in this way might even help,aand if so, how can it be done with only 2 360k drives?
Also, if indeed there's no hope in this solution, does anyone know oof any RLL disk controllers that might work with my system?
I am desparately in need of help! Any would be tremendously aappreciated!
Thanx in advance,
Jim
--
Jim Wegman - via FidoNet node 1:260/230
UUCP: {smart-host}!ur-valhalla!rochgte!Jim.Wegman
INTERNET: Jim.Wegman@rochgte.fidonet.orggeert@ahds.UUCP (Geert W.T. Jonkheer CCS/TS) (04/19/91)
When i was making a new root floppy to boot from (i start from floppies and then mount my hard disk partition), it occurred to me that minix always want that the root floppy is formatted as single sided and that it also mounts it as being single sided. If you forget this, like i did, and mount this floppy as a double sided disk (/dev/dd?) and you save something on the so mounted disk, you can't boot from this disk any longer. Minix does save the data on the single sided disk and it seems that this goes well, but when you want to boot from it the next time you are using minix you will get a sig=??? pid = ??? at startup time. What i want to know is, is there a way to tell minix at startup to boot from a double sided floppy and not generally assume that you are using a single sided drive. Can minix automatically select or see, if a single or a double sided disk is in the drive. How to tell this to minix. I prefer the last option. Then you have no problems at all. Thanks in advance. Geert. PS: By the way, i am using minix version 1.5.10. --------------------------------------------------------------------- UUCP : ..!hp4nl!ahds!geert Geert Jonkheer. Albert Heyn B.V. the Netherlands. ---------------------------------------------------------------------
ytsuji@wucc.waseda.ac.jp (Y.Tsuji) (04/20/91)
Unless my memory fails me, booting procedure depended on TOS. It is TOS that reads and loads the very first sector in memory and the boot sector uses TOS again to read the rest of the code from the floppy. If there was a way of distinquishing SS or DS, what use would it be? The boot disk can be double sided or single sided depending on how you actually compile the source code. Making use of TOS until the control is passed to Minix OS makes life a lot easier. I just cannot understand the question. I am sorry. Incidentally, my boot disk is double sided.
ralf@ptavv.ka.sub.org (Ralf Wenk) (04/21/91)
You can: a) change the default root device in /usr/include/minix/boot.h , compile and link a new kernel which now thinks of a double sided root image as the default. b) enter the mayor and minor device number of the double sided floppy when the system asks for the root image. E.g. 2,8 for /dev/dd0 -- -- Ralf Wenk -- ralf@ptavv.ka.sub.org
geert@ahds.UUCP (Geert W.T. Jonkheer CCS/TS) (04/22/91)
In article <5487@wucc.waseda.ac.jp>, ytsuji@wucc.waseda.ac.jp (Y.Tsuji) writes: > Unless my memory fails me, booting procedure depended on TOS. It is > TOS that reads and loads the very first sector in memory and the > boot sector uses TOS again to read the rest of the code from the > floppy. If there was a way of distinquishing SS or DS, what use > would it be? The boot disk can be double sided or single sided depending > on how you actually compile the source code. Making use of TOS until > the control is passed to Minix OS makes life a lot easier. I just > cannot understand the question. I am sorry. Incidentally, my boot disk > is double sided. Sorry, I forgot to mention, that it is not the boot floppy thats causing the problem, but it's the root floppy. When I started up Minix and minix askes for the root floppy it wants the root floppy to be single sided (no matter what). When you are mounting this floppy as double sided (/dev/dd0) and put something on it, data will be corrupted the next time the system is loaded from the root floppy. All I want to do is that minix loads the root partion from a double sided disk or that minix automatically sees the differences between single or double sided disks as TOS sees it. Geert.
"Volker A. Brandt" <UNM409%DBNRHRZ1.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu> (04/23/91)
Hello! "Geert W.T. Jonkheer CCS/TS" <geert@AHDS.UUCP> says: > Sorry, I forgot to mention, that it is not the boot floppy thats > causing the problem, but it's the root floppy. When I started up > Minix and minix askes for the root floppy it wants the root floppy > to be single sided (no matter what). When you are mounting > this floppy as double sided (/dev/dd0) and put something on it, > data will be corrupted the next time the system is loaded > from the root floppy. All I want to do is that minix loads > the root partion from a double sided disk or that minix > automatically sees the differences between single or double > sided disks as TOS sees it. What device are you specifying when MINIX-ST asks you for the root disk? Have you tried 2,8? Don't just press return... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bitnet: UNM409@DBNRHRZ1 Volker A. Brandt UUCP: ...!unido!DBNRHRZ1.bitnet!unm409 Angewandte Mathematik ARPAnet: UNM409%DBNRHRZ1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Bonn, Germany)
HBO043%DJUKFA11.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Christoph van Wuellen) (04/23/91)
Perhaps you should not just say <return> to the request for the root disk, but specify the (major,minor) number pair appropriate for /dev/dd0 (instead of /dev/fd0). -- later, modify FS such that /dev/dd0 is the default. C.v.W.
mde@cup.portal.com (Michael Dennis Evenson) (04/24/91)
I use 3,9 to load the root file system from my second hard drive. Seems to work OK, so I don't see why you couldn't also specify a particular floppy type.
geert@ahds.UUCP (Geert W.T. Jonkheer CCS/TS) (04/24/91)
Thanks to all who respond to my message of booting minix from
a double sided disk. The solutions (summary) are given below:
1) Type 2,8 for the current root device, when minix
asks for it (Specify root dev). (Adam and many others).
2) Change include/minix/boot.h and compile de kernel.
hange DRAMIMAGEDEV in DEV_FD0 + 8 oid.
is the minor device nummer of /dev/dd0
(Frans)
3) A solution to boot minix directly from one floppy:
(Direct copy from the letter I received from Adam David)
=================================================================
There are 2 distinct operations involved.
A) Modify the minix system to boot from rootFS on device 2,8 without asking.
It is also necessary to modify the bootsector of the floppy to load the
minix image from after the end of the rootFS on a DD disk.
B) Copy the new minix image to the correct place on the rootFS disk and replace
the bootsector with the new version.
The modifications are to minix/config.h, tools/boot.s, tools/type.s (and also
tools/Makefile). Basically it's just a matter of setting
#define ASKDEV 0
#define BOOTDEV <changed>
I think there was also one more #define to change, possibly related to
bootdrive it could have been in another header file. I'm telling you this from
memory, so I might be wrong. It's really easy, all you need is to get the
idea of how it's done and you can figure it out for yourself (honest).
In the assembler code there is a 'clr.w d6' which needs to be changed to
'move.w #startsec,d6' where you have already equated startsec to the correct
sector offset on the disk. For instance, I have a 360k rootFS and I use
the next available sector number 720 as the start of the minix image
(exactly as produced starting with a boot sector).
To get the minix image onto the rootFS (again using my figures for example):
dd if=minix.imx of=/dev/dd0 seek=720
dd if=minix.imx of=/dev/dd0 count=1
If you've done it right then you can boot direct from the same floppy.
At present the minixFS makes no use of the bootblock on floppies. In case this
ever changes I defined a bootFS entry in type.s so that the actual boot code
(after the first bra.s instruction) starts at offset $80 on the disk sector.
Due to irregularities in the assembler the 'bra.s *+$80' instruction had to be
coded as '.data2 0x607E'
-Adam David-
adamd@rhi.hi.is
=================================================================
Geert.