paula@bcsaic.UUCP (Paul Allen) (04/22/88)
Out of curiosity, I recently tried to boot Minix on a Compaq 386/20 that I sort-of have access to. After hitting the '=' key to start loading the root file system, I was greeted with the following: <pregnant pause accompanied by frantic, but futile, retry noises from the floppy> Unrecoverable disk error on device 2/0, block 1 File system panic: diskette in drive 0 is not a root file system To check that this particular drive could indeed read my root file system floppy, I successfully diskcopy'd it onto another floppy. Attempting to boot minix using the fresh root floppy lead to the same dismal result. I'm running 1.1 Minix with the ega scrolling patches installed. It works like a champ on my Sun IPC. (That's a 10MHz AT clone on a VME board that slides into a Sun workstation. I run Minix in a PCtool window on my screen.) After seeing the message about the "lock nop" sequence in _vid_copy causing problems on 386's, I wrestled a copy of my kernel over onto DOS, used debug to convert the lock into a nop, and wrestled the result back over onto my Minix boot floppy. The next time I get a chance, I'll try this doctored version on the Compaq. I don't think it'll help, though. It looks like Minix is having major problems talking to the floppy controller. It worked fine on a nearby Compaq 286. Anybody know anything about the floppy controller in a Compaq 386/20? Is it non-standard, or is 20MHz just too rich for Minix? :-) Paul -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Paul L. Allen | paula@boeing.com Boeing Advanced Technology Center | ...!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!bcsaic!paula