dobson@usuhsb.ucc.usuhs.nnmc.navy.mil (BCP) (09/18/89)
Has anyone successfully created a 3.5" boot disk for other than the PS/2?
I have a 386 clone with an ELT motherboard and a 1.44M 3.5" floppy as the
boot floppy drive that I would like to be able to run Minix on. I have
successfully (I think) moved the boot image onto a 3.5" floppy but I get an
endless strin of "Read error. Automatic reboot" messages after the "Booting
Minix 1.3....." message appears on the screen. I suspect the problem is in
bootblok.s For a 1.2M and 360K 5.25" floppy, bootblok gets the drive params
from an internal table but for 3.5" floppies, it gets the params from the ROM.
location
unfortunately, this location is only good for PS/2s.
Does anyone know the correct values to stick in either atpar or pcpar in
bootblok.s to allow booting from a 3.5" disk?
Thanks for any help,
Mike
dobson@usuhsb.ucc.usuhs.nnmc.navy.mil (preferred) or
dobson@usuhsb.bitnetjpainter@tjp.East.Sun.COM (John Painter - Sun BOS Hardware) (09/19/89)
In article <24276@louie.udel.EDU> dobson@usuhsb.ucc.usuhs.nnmc.navy.mil (BCP) writes: >Has anyone successfully created a 3.5" boot disk for other than the PS/2? >I have a 386 clone with an ELT motherboard and a 1.44M 3.5" floppy as the >boot floppy drive that I would like to be able to run Minix on. I have I have Minix running on a DFI 286 clone-of-an-AT board. 1 meg of memory (now that it is cheap again) and 1 3.5 inch floppy and one 1.2 meg 5.25 inch floppy. I just tested the 3.5 inch under Minix this weekend. I had been using a toshiba 720k floppy, but changed over to a 1.44M (teac) drive this weekend. All works as expected. Award BIOS is on the mother board. I did however have problems making a 1.4M filesystem and just made a 1.2 meg one. As I track down the problem (probably pilot error as I didn't have much time to test) I'll keep you informed. P.S. Any mail server Minix archives. It's tough to FTP from here. /Tjp -disclaimer "I love the source ... " (sung to I love New York)
reyn@trsvax.UUCP (09/20/89)
Regarding booting minix from 3 1/2" drives... It would be really nice if Minix could be purchased on 3 1/2" media. All new Tandy machines come with 3 1/2" drives standard, and I'm sure that many other manufacturers are following suite. If I did not have access to 5 1/4" machines at work, I would have been just plain out of luck in getting minix. As it stands now, I won't be able to use minix at home until I am successful in building a 3 1/2" file system (Unfortunately, I too have yet to accomplish this feat). Note that I am not talking about PS/2 systems, I'm talking about respectable IBM clones with 720K or 1.44M floppy drives. Help will be sincerly appreciated ... John Reynolds decvax!microsoft!sys1!trsvax!reyn
jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) (09/22/89)
What I did when I made a 3.5" boot image to a 720K 3.5" disk was this. The
system configuration was as follows...
Drive A: CMS (Epson) 1.2 Mb 5.25" drive
Drive B: Mitsumi 720K 3.5" drive
I went to the makefile that makes the image and set the destination to
image to /dev/at1. Worked perfectly. I don't know if anybody has gotten
to work 100% of the time much less boot from them. But I can tell you that if
you're using a compatable controller, making a 720K 3.5" boot disk is simple.
/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------*
* Flames: /dev/null (on my Minix partition)
*--------------------------------------------------------------------------*
* ARPA : crash!pnet01!jca@nosc.mil
* INET : jca@pnet01.cts.com
* UUCP : {nosc ucsd hplabs!hd-sdd}!crash!pnet01!jca
*--------------------------------------------------------------------------*
* Note : My opinions are that...mine. My boss doesn't pay me enough to
* speak in the best interests of the company (yet).
*--------------------------------------------------------------------------*/umbaugh@hcx (Dr David L. Umbaugh) (09/23/89)
Somebody writes:
What I did when I made a 3.5" boot image to a 720K 3.5" disk was this. The
system configuration was as follows...
Drive A: CMS (Epson) 1.2 Mb 5.25" drive
Drive B: Mitsumi 720K 3.5" drive
I went to the makefile that makes the image and set the destination
to image to /dev/at1. Worked perfectly. I don't know if anybody
has gotten to work 100% of the time much less boot from them. But
I can tell you that if you're using a compatable controller, making
a 720K 3.5" boot disk is simple.
But if the drives are reversed (drive 0 is 3.5") and the system boots
only from hard drive or floppy drive 0 you need a 3.5" bootdisk to
even get started. Then, its not so easy.
* ARPA : crash!pnet01!jca@nosc.mil
* INET : jca@pnet01.cts.com
* UUCP : {nosc ucsd hplabs!hd-sdd}!crash!pnet01!jca
L. David Umbaugh (Dave)
CSE Dept. Univ. Texas at Arlington
internet: umbaugh@evax.arl.utexas.edu BITNET: B652LDU@UTARLG
snail-mail: P.O.Box 19015, Arlington, TX 76019
telephone: (817) 273-3628
[OBSOLETE]
phonenet: cs_umbaugh@uta.edu CSNET: cs_umbaugh%uta.edu@relay.cs.net jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) (09/25/89)
umbaugh@hcx (Dr David L. Umbaugh) writes: >Somebody writes: > What I did when I made a 3.5" boot image to a 720K 3.5" disk was this. The > system configuration was as follows... > > Drive A: CMS (Epson) 1.2 Mb 5.25" drive > Drive B: Mitsumi 720K 3.5" drive > > I went to the makefile that makes the image and set the destination > to image to /dev/at1. Worked perfectly. I don't know if anybody > has gotten to work 100% of the time much less boot from them. But > I can tell you that if you're using a compatable controller, making > a 720K 3.5" boot disk is simple. >But if the drives are reversed (drive 0 is 3.5") and the system boots >only from hard drive or floppy drive 0 you need a 3.5" bootdisk to >even get started. Then, its not so easy. In my system here, I don't use 3.5" boot disks. I was constructing this disk for a friend of mine who does not have a 1.2 Mb 5.25" floppy drive (I have the 1.2 Mb AT 1.3 distribution). It worked flawlessly. I stuck the 3.5" disk in his boot drive and it worked with no problem. I admit that I did open up my computer, swap the drives, and changed the AT BIOS set up RAM to test it before I tried it on a friend's machine, but it worked just the same. Until Minix is available on 3.5" media for PC compatables, you are going to need a machine with a 5.25" drive and a 3.5" drive to construct a boot disk. I was merely pointing out that there's no real black magic in making the boot disk if you have both types of drives. It is true that to originally make the 3.5" boot disk you first have to have a 5.25" drive as drive A: (logical drive 0), a hard drive (if you don't want to spend a while and some disk swapping to make the boot image), and a 3.5" drive as drive B: (logical drive 1). I personally have no qualms about opening up my, or anyone else's for that matter, computer to get something to work. I did that all the time puttering around with my OMTI 5520A in an attempt to make an xt_wini.c for it. Unfortunately I never got the thing to work. I finally managed to get a WA3-16 (a WD1003-WA2 clone) card which at_wini.c is very happy to converse with. The moral of the story is that in dealing with Minix, you can't be afraid to open up your machine to tinker with dipswitches, swap a card, etc. Minix is not for the layman computer illiterate user to begin with. /*--------------------------------------------------------------------------* * Flames: /dev/null (on my Minix partition) *--------------------------------------------------------------------------* * ARPA : crash!pnet01!jca@nosc.mil * INET : jca@pnet01.cts.com * UUCP : {nosc ucsd hplabs!hd-sdd}!crash!pnet01!jca *--------------------------------------------------------------------------* * Note : My opinions are that...mine. My boss doesn't pay me enough to * speak in the best interests of the company (yet). *--------------------------------------------------------------------------*/