hartzell@boulder.Colorado.EDU (George Hartzell) (04/21/88)
I am looking into putting minix on a zenith 183 portable. It has a 20
meg drive, an meg of expanded ram, and a 3.5" 720k floppy. I have the
minix 1.2 distribution floppies (360k) and have them running on a
vanilla pc with no problems. The pc has a 3.5" drive but it seems to me
that I have to (re)write the floppy driver to recognize it. It tried
making a block special device with major=2 and minor=3, but it failed.
Does anyone out there know how to go about getting the stuff over to the
little disks? While we're at it, does anyone have minix running on a
zenith portable? Is it compatible enough or am I wasting my time?
g.
George Hartzell (303) 492-4535
MCD Biology, University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309
hartzell@Boulder.Colorado.EDU ..!{ncar,nbires}!boulder!hartzell
(bitnet hosts try: hartzell%boulder.colorado.edu@jvnca.csc.org)
George Hartzell (303) 492-4535
MCD Biology, University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309
hartzell@Boulder.Colorado.EDU ..!{ncar,nbires}!boulder!hartzell
(bitnet hosts try: hartzell%boulder.colorado.edu@jvnca.csc.org)cs002@unocss.UUCP (Stan Wileman) (04/21/88)
In article <5525@sigi.Colorado.EDU>, hartzell@boulder.Colorado.EDU (George Hartzell) writes: > I am looking into putting minix on a zenith 183 portable. ... > ... Is it compatible enough or am I wasting my time? Yes, MINIX runs well on the Zenith laptops. I haven't any experience with the Z-183 (with the builtin wini), but my external 20 MB wini on the Z-181 works fine. Now, for the fun part -- getting it there... I moved MINIX from 5.25" to 3.5" diskettes using a procedure that should work for most folks, especially those with both types of drives on the same machine. It involves three steps: 1. Create an MS-DOS file that contains a sector-for-sector image of a MINIX 5.25" floppy. 2. Copy this MS-DOS file to a machine that has 3.5" diskettes. Note that this step is unnecessary if you have both 5.25" and 3.5" drives on the same machine; I don't, so I used a product called the "Brooklyn Bridge" to achieve the transfer; any asynchronous comm. program (Cross- talk, mirror, kermit, etc.) should be usable, but slower than the Bridge. 3. Copy the MINIX disk image from the MS-DOS file sector-for-sector to the 3.5" disk (which was previously formatted). Once you've transferred a boot disk, a root fs, and a /usr fs you should be able to run MINIX on the Z-18?. Note that the disks will be treated as 360K filesystems, but that's okay, since they have at least that much. The floppy driver in 1.2 handles the 3.5"-ers on the Z-181 without difficulty (although I'm certain some parameter-tweaking could result in improved performance :-) You CAN make 720K filesystems by using mkfs and NO SOURCE CODE CHANGES! The only problem I've not found sufficient time to correct is the keyboard encoding; the Z-18? machines use the extra "function" shift key to get some of the codes normally found on a PC's keyboard, and they're encoded in a way that's got my little mind buggered! Incidentally, steps (1) and (3) in the procedure given above were accomplished with a pair of complementary C programs that run under MS-DOS. These were compiled using MS C 4.0, but other compilers should work just as well. GETDI.C ------- /* * Make an image of the diskette in selected disk drive. * The order in which the information is written is * * Side 0, Track 0, Sector 1 ... Sector MAXSEC * Side 1, Track 0, Sector 1 ... Sector MAXSEC * Side 0, Track 1, Sector 1 ... Sector MAXSEC * ... * Side 1, Track MAXTRK, Sector 1 ... Sector MAXSEC * * The output file is always named DISK.ALL */ #include <stdio.h> #include <dos.h> #include <fcntl.h> #define MAXSEC 9 #define MAXTRK 39 union REGS inregs; union REGS outregs; struct SREGS sregs; char buffer[512*MAXSEC]; /* where to place the track copy */ int drive; int trkno, headno; int out; /* output file descriptor */ main() { int ok, tries; inregs.h.ah = 0; /* reset disk system */ int86(0x13, &inregs, &outregs); out = creat("C:DISK.ALL",0666); if (out < 0) { printf("Can't create C:DISK.ALL\n"); exit(1); } close(out); out = open("C:DISK.ALL",O_WRONLY | O_BINARY); if (out < 0) { printf("Can't open C:DISK.ALL\n"); exit(1); } printf("Drive: "); if (scanf("%d",&drive) != 1) exit(0); trkno = 0; headno = 0; printf("Reading track/head "); for (trkno=0;trkno<=MAXTRK;trkno++) for (headno=0;headno<2;headno++) { printf("%2d/%2d\b\b\b\b\b", trkno, headno); ok = 0; tries = 5; while (!ok && tries) { ok = !readtrk(); tries--; } if (ok) savetrk(); else { printf("\nError reading diskette.\n"); exit(1); } } } readtrk() { int i,j; inregs.h.ah = 2; /* read sector */ inregs.h.al = MAXSEC; /* read all of one track */ inregs.h.ch = trkno; /* track 0 */ inregs.h.cl = 1; /* sector 1 */ inregs.h.dh = headno; /* head 0 */ inregs.h.dl = drive; /* drive 0 */ segread(&sregs); /* setup es same as ds */ sregs.es = sregs.ds; inregs.x.bx = buffer; int86x(0x13, &inregs, &outregs, &sregs); /* do it! */ return(outregs.x.cflag); } savetrk() { int i, n; for (i=0;i<MAXSEC;i++) { n = write(out,buffer+i*512,512); /* save one sector */ if (n != 512) { /* test for an error */ printf("\nError writing C:DISK.ALL\n"); exit(1); } } } PUTDI.C ------- /* * Write drive 1 from the contents of file DISK.ALL * The order in which the information is written is * * Side 0, Track 0, Sector 1 ... Sector MAXSEC * Side 1, Track 0, Sector 1 ... Sector MAXSEC * Side 0, Track 1, Sector 1 ... Sector MAXSEC * ... * Side 1, Track MAXTRK, Sector 1 ... Sector MAXSEC * */ #include <stdio.h> #include <dos.h> #include <fcntl.h> #define MAXSEC 9 #define MAXTRK 39 union REGS inregs; union REGS outregs; struct SREGS sregs; char buffer[512*MAXSEC]; /* where to place the track */ int drive; int trkno, headno; int in; /* input file descriptor */ main() { int ok, tries; inregs.h.ah = 0; /* reset disk system */ int86(0x13, &inregs, &outregs); in = open("DISK.ALL",O_RDONLY | O_BINARY); if (in < 0) { printf("Can't open DISK.ALL\n"); exit(1); } printf("Drive: "); if (scanf("%d",&drive) != 1) exit(0); trkno = 0; headno = 0; printf("Writing cylinder/head "); for (trkno=0;trkno<=MAXTRK;trkno++) for (headno=0;headno<2;headno++) { printf("%2d/%2d\b\b\b\b\b", trkno, headno); gettrk(); /* get one track from DISK.ALL */ ok = 0; tries = 5; while (!ok && tries) { ok = !writetrk(); tries--; } if (!ok) { printf("Error writing disk.\n"); exit(1); } } } writetrk() { int i,j; inregs.h.ah = 3; /* write sector */ inregs.h.al = MAXSEC; /* write all of one track */ inregs.h.ch = trkno; /* track number */ inregs.h.cl = 1; /* sector 1 */ inregs.h.dh = headno; /* head number */ inregs.h.dl = drive; /* drive number */ segread(&sregs); /* setup es same as ds */ sregs.es = sregs.ds; inregs.x.bx = buffer; int86x(0x13, &inregs, &outregs, &sregs); /* do it! */ return(outregs.x.cflag); } gettrk() { int i, n; for (i=0;i<MAXSEC;i++) { n = read(in, buffer+i*512, 512); /* read one sector */ if (n != 512) { /* test for an error */ printf("\nError reading DISK.ALL\n"); exit(1); } } } ------- Hope this helps; MINIX on a laptop is really cute in airports :-) Stan Wileman ..!ihnp4!unocss!cs002 (UUCP) U. of Nebraska at Omaha, Math/CS Dept. cs002%zeus@crcvms.unl.edu (BITNET)
darrylo@hpsrli.HP.COM (Darryl Okahata) (04/22/88)
In comp.os.minix, hartzell@boulder.Colorado.EDU (George Hartzell) writes: > I am looking into putting minix on a zenith 183 portable. It has a 20 [ ... ] > Does anyone out there know how to go about getting the stuff over to the > little disks? While we're at it, does anyone have minix running on a > zenith portable? Is it compatible enough or am I wasting my time? > g. > > George Hartzell (303) 492-4535 > MCD Biology, University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309 > hartzell@Boulder.Colorado.EDU ..!{ncar,nbires}!boulder!hartzell > (bitnet hosts try: hartzell%boulder.colorado.edu@jvnca.csc.org) Write a program to do a "disk image" copy of the 5 1/4" disk to the 3 1/2" one. By "disk image", I mean: Transfer head 0, track 0, sector 1 of the 5 1/4" disk to head 0, track 0, sector 1 of the 3 1/2" disk. Transfer head 0, track 0, sector 2 of the 5 1/4" disk to head 0, track 0, sector 2 of the 3 1/2" disk. Transfer head 0, track 0, sector 3 of the 5 1/4" disk to head 0, track 0, sector 3 of the 3 1/2" disk. Etc., ad nauseum. This can be done, as the sector size on the 3 1/2" disk is the same size (512 bytes) as that on the 5 1/4" disk. Note that, as the 3 1/2" disk has many more sectors, many sectors on the 3 1/2" disk will not be used. The only problem with this method is that your 3 1/2" disks look like 360K disks to Minix. Once you've copied all of the 5 1/4" disks to 3 1/2" format, just boot normally (I assume that Minix works on the Zenith). I wrote a program to do a disk image copy and was able to boot minix with my portable. I wrote the program using a very non-portable dialect of C, and I don't know if I still have it. -- Darryl Okahata {hplabs!hpccc!, hpfcla!} hpsrla!darrylo CompuServe: 75206,3074 Disclaimer: the above is the author's personal opinion and is not the opinion or policy of his employer or of the little green men that have been following him all day.