mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) (07/12/90)
I just finished moving some stuff around on my system, and I discovered that I had a 20MB MFM hard disk that wasn't being used for anything. Hmm, I thought to myself...This would be a perfect time to haul out Minix and try upgrading to 1.5.10 (or whatever the current version is). Unfortunately, I seem to have run into a slight chicken-and-egg problem. The last time I played around with Minix, it was on an RLL hard disk, and so the kernel on my boot disk is configured for RLL operation. I never made a 1.3 boot disk configured for an MFM disk, because I never thought I'd need it. And my only copy of original P-H 1.2 Minix seems to have suffered bit rot -- When it comes up, it just prints a lot of "+++ Divide Error! +++" messages; I never even get the "Booting Minix 1.2 ..." message. So, I can't use my hard disk with my current Minix setup. And because I only have one 360K floppy drive, recompiling the kernel on floppies is not an option. Unfortunately, I also don't have the option of temporarily reformatting a hard disk somewhere with an RLL controller. This is my home machine, the RLL drive is 65MB, and I don't have a tape drive. I also don't have access to a machine at work or school with an expendable RLL drive. So, my request is this: If one of you kind people out there has a Minix/PC 1.3 boot disk with the MFM xt_wini.c linked into the kernel, I would greatly appreciate it if you could contact me. Or, if you have the 1.3 source code on your hard disk and would be willing to relink it and build a boot disk for me, that would be okay, too. We can then work something out WRT the transport method (FTP, snail-mail floppies, etc. -- whatever's good for you). This shouldn't be a violation of the copyright since you're only sending me the boot disk, and Minix is useless without the rest of the package. Thanks, and I hope to be running Minix again soon! -- Marc Unangst | Internet: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us | THIS SPACE FOR RENT UUCP : ...!umich!leebai!mudos!mju | Fidonet : Marc Unangst of 1:2200/129.0 +--------------------------------------