ben@epmooch.UUCP (Rev. Ben A. Mesander) (12/02/90)
My friend Al sent me this note to post for him on comp.os.minix. Please reply directly to me, because he does not have reliable net access. ************************************************************************* I recently purchased a copy of MINIX 1.5, the 3 1/2" version, intending to run it on my AMSTRAD PC 1386, but I have been unable to get it to even boot. The system is a 20MHz 386, with floppy controller, hard-disk controller, VGA, mouse, parallel, and serial ports built into the mother board. The hard-disk controller is disabled via a jumper, and a SEAGATE ST01 SCSI controller card is used to control the ST1096N 80Mb hard drive. I also disabled the mouse port and added a Logitech HiRes Bus Mouse and card. I have tried removing all the cards, but was still unable to boot. The floppy (drive A: for DOS) is a high-density, 1.44 Mb drive. The system is in a compact case, and it looks like the motherboard has a lot of stuff consolidated into a few big AMSTRAD-made chips. I tried all 4 bootable disks (disks 1-3 and 12) with the same result -- nothing. I confirmed that I have no trouble booting DOS with this drive, using either the original 720K DOS diskette, or a 1.44M boot disk. On power-up the system first twiddles each floppy (I have tried it with and without the external 5.25-inch 1.2M floppy drive connected). Then I get the following messages on the screen: SEAGATE SCSI BIOS REVISION 3.0.0 (C)COPYRIGHT 1988 SEAGATE 1 SCSI drive found. AMSTRAD PC1386 (v1.11) (c)1988 AMSTRAD plc 640Kb of BASE Memory 3456Kb of EXTENDED Memory Insert a SYSTEM disk into drive A Then press any key Of course, when I pulled the SCSI controller card, the part above the "AMSTRAD PC1386 (v1.11)" wasn't there. Also, I noticed that the message is different than the one I usually get when I forget and leave a DOS non- bootable disk in the drive. That message is normally: Non-System disk or disk error Replace and press any key when ready For what it's worth, I'm running DOS 4.0.1 on the system, although that shouldn't matter up to this point. Does anyone know, first of all, what could be causing this problem? Am I dealing with an insurmountable hardware-software incompatibility? Has anyone run MINIX on an AMSTRAD system, or on the SEAGATE SCSI drive? At this point, I can't even look at the distribution disks to see if drivers for these exist. I'd sure appreciate any help I can get. Please reply by mail, I don't have a newsfeed for comp.os.minix yet. Thanks. -- | ben@epmooch.UUCP (Ben Mesander) | | ben%servalan.UUCP@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu | | !chinet!uokmax!servalan!epmooch!ben |
clyde2@unix.cis.pitt.edu (James C Elder) (12/03/90)
In article <ben.3646@epmooch.UUCP> ben@epmooch.UUCP (Rev. Ben A. Mesander) writes:
-I recently purchased a copy of MINIX 1.5, the 3 1/2" version, intending to
-run it on my AMSTRAD PC 1386, but I have been unable to get it to even boot.
-
-Does anyone know, first of all, what could be causing this problem? Am I
-dealing with an insurmountable hardware-software incompatibility? Has anyone
-run MINIX on an AMSTRAD system, or on the SEAGATE SCSI drive?
I also own an Amstrad 1386, and would like to know the answer to this
query. I have been reading about MINIX, and am considering purchasing it.
Please clue me in on the answer to this problem.
Thank you,
Jim Elder
clyde2@unix.cis.pit.edu